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n   oration  delivered  before  the 
New  England  society  in  the  . . . 


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UPHAM'S   ORATION 


DELIVERED    BEFORE 


THE    NEW    ENGLAND    SOCIETY, 


IN    THE 


CITY  OF   NEW  YORK. 


AN 


ORATION 


DELIVERED     BEFORE 


THE    NEW    ENGLAND    SOCIETY, 


THE   CITY   OF   NEW  YOKK, 


DECEMBER    22,    1846, 


By  CHARLES   W.  UPHAM. 


SECOND      EDITION. 


BOSTON: 

JAMES    MUNROE    AND    COMPANY, 

1847. 


At  a  meeting  of  the  Board  of  Officers  of  The  New-England  Society  in  the 
City  of  New  York,  held  at  the  Astor  House  December  30th,  1846,  it  was,  oa  mo- 
tion of  Mr.  Fessenden,  seconded  by  Mr.  Babcock, 

Resolved,  that  a  Committee  be  appointed  by  the  Chair  to  wait  upon  Rev. 
Charles  W.  Upham,  to  tender  him  the  thanks  of  the  Society  for  his  Oration  de- 
livered on  the  late  Anniversary,  and  to  request  a  copy  of  the  same  for  publication ; 
and  that  when  said  Oration  is  received,  it  be  published  on  behalf  of  the  Society, 
under  the  direction  of  s?id  Committee. 

Copy  from  the  Minutes. 

Alfred  A.  Weeks,  Secretary. 


BOSTON : 

PRINTED    BY    FREEMAN    AND    B0LI.E3, 

DEVONSHIRE   STREET. 


ORATION. 


Mr.  President  and  Gentlemen  of  the  New  England  Society, 
IN  THE  City  of  New  York. 

The  topics  that  claim  our  consideration,  on  this 
Anniversary,  are  so  obvious,  and  so  inseparable 
from  the  occasion  and  the  sentiments  awakened  by 
it,  and  those  sentiments  are  so  uniform  in  all  hearts, 
that  no  ingenious  and  elaborate  exordium  is  needed 
to  bring  your  minds  into  an  appropriate  frame.  The 
field  over  which  our  meditations  are  led  this  day,  is 
not  a  remote  point  from  our  spontaneous  and  in- 
voluntary associations,  to  be  reached  only  by  long- 
drawn  approaches,  but  opens  at  once  upon  the 
vision. 

On  the  22d  of  December,  in  the  year  1620,  a 
company  of  Englishmen  landed  on  the  shore  of  what 
has  since  been  the  township  of  Plymouth,  in  the 
present  State  of  Massachusetts.  This  circumstance 
has  long  been  regarded,  with  a  just  and  felicitous 
discrimination,  as  the  opening  scene  in  the  drama 
of  civilized  humanity  in  the  New  World. 


Voyagers  had  often  before,  we  know  not  from 
how  early  a  period,  visited  the  coasts  of  America. 
Scientific  philologists,  and  philosophical  students 
of  manners,  customs,  and  other  memorials,  have 
imagined  themselves  to  have  traced,  more  or  less 
clearly,  evidence  of  transmigrations  from  the  older 
continents  to  this,  in  the  ages  of  a  remote  antiquity. 
European  settlements,  many  of  which  quickly  dis- 
appeared, but,  in  some  instances,  giving  rise  to 
permanent  and  populous  Provinces  and  States,  were 
commenced  at  dates  anterior  to  the  landing  of  the 
Pilgrims  on  the  day  we  commemorate. 

But  the  attending  and  resulting  circumstances  of 
that  event  are  so  peculiar  in  their  character,  so 
momentous  in  their  bearings,  and  so  wide-spread  in 
their  influence,  that,  by  general  consent,  the  open- 
ing of  the  continent  of  America  to  the  civilization 
of  Christendom,  is  everywhere  getting  to  be  con- 
sidered as  dating  from  the  hour  when  the  Pilgrims 
landed  at  Plymouth.  It  may  safely  be  taken  for 
granted,  that,  whatever  particular  interest  diflerent 
localities  may  feel  in  contemplating  the  origin  of 
their  own  communities,  whether  before  or  after  the 
22d  of  December,  1620,  all  will  acquiesce  and  con- 
spire in  regarding  the  Rock  of  Plymouth  as  the 
point  from  which  the  ever-advancing  and  ever-ex- 
panding wave  of  Anglo-Saxon  liberty  and  light  be- 
gan to  flow  over  America.  Taking  this  compre- 
hensive view  of  the  subject,  presenting  the  occasion 


5 

as  the  best  example  and  highest  instance  of  the  va- 
rious settlements  by  Europeans  and  Christians  on 
the  American  continent,  we  may  rely  upon  the  sym- 
pathy of  those  of  our  fellow-citizens  of  a  different 
colonial  origin  from  ourselves,  who  may  honor  us 
with  their  presence,  in  the  sentiments  and  associa- 
tions to  which  we  yield  our  own  minds  and  hearts. 
While,  as  the  descendants  of  New-England  men, 
with  filial  and  grateful  reverence,  we  pay  honor  to 
their  memory,  it  is  my  purpose,  so  far  as  the  privi- 
lege and  ability  are  given  me  to  determine  the  spirit 
of  the  day,  that  the  contemplation  of  your  ancestral 
glories  shall  convey  to  your  hearts  lessons  which 
may  be  profitably  pondered  by  all  Americans,  in 
whatever  portion  of  the  republic  they  may  have  their 
abode,  and  from  whatever  sources  they  have  sprung. 

Before  taking  up  the  topics  suggested  by  any 
more  limited  view  of  the  subject,  I  wish  to  concen- 
trate attention  upon  the  event  we  commemorate  in 
the  light  I  have  suggested,  as,  by  way  of  eminence, 
marking  the  era  of  the  contact  and  intercommuni- 
cation of  the  two  hemispheres  of  our  globe.  Let 
us  pause,  at  the  outset,  and  open  our  minds  to  re- 
ceive and  appreciate  the  interest  and  grandeur  of 
the  thought. 

From  the  beginning  of  time,  the  great  oceans 
had  been  impassable  walls,  keeping  the  oppo- 
site  sides   of  our  planet  in  distant   and  complete 


separation.  A  mysterious,  but  all-wise,  Providence 
held  them  apart.  For  thousands  of  years,  the  earth, 
as  it  revolved  on  its  axis,  had  presented  to  the  sun 
and  the  stars  the  vast  double  continent  of  America, 
shrouded  in  moral  and  intellectual  darkness.  Ex- 
tending from  pole  almost  to  pole,  it  embraced,  in 
its  geographical  features,  all  the  forms  of  sublimity 
and  beauty  of  scenery,  and  every  advantage  which 
can  flow  from  the  arrangement  of  land  and  water, 
rivers  and  lakes,  mountains  and  meadows  ;  and  in 
the  several  departments  of  the  mineral,  vegetable 
and  animal  kingdoms,  an  unrivalled  richness  of  ma- 
terial and  magnificence  of  display.  Its  surface,  for 
the  most  part,  remained  under  the  deep  shadows 
of  primeval  forests,  and  was  traversed  by  roaming 
tribes  of  benighted  savages.  It  is  true  that,  on 
some  parts  of  the  continent,  there  are  vestiges  of  a 
peculiar  and  inexplicable  form  of  barbaric  splendor, 
in  vast  and  shapeless  mounds  of  earth,  and  structures 
of  masonry  and  statuary  ;  but  there  is  no  indication 
whatever  of  the  existence  and  action,  at  any  time 
or  to  any  extent,  on  any  part  of  its  entire  length 
and  breadth,  of  an  element  of  moral,  social  and 
political  progress. 

The  character  of  the  aboriginal  American  cannot 
fail  to  be  a  subject  of  interest  in  all  coming  times. 
It  exhibited  many  of  the  traits  and  faculties  of  hu- 
man nature  in  an  extraordinary  development  of  dig- 
nity and  strength.     Fortitude  and  manly  endurance, 


heroism  and  patriotism,  will  ever  find  their  bright- 
est exemplars  in  warrior  chiefs  whose  spheres  of 
glory  were  the  wild  scenes  and  gloomy  recesses  of 
American  forests.  But  the  traditions  that  relate 
their  story  can  scarcely  be  made  to  take  their  place 
among  the  records  of  real  and  authenticated  events. 
They  pass  before  the  mind  like  shadowy  visions  of 
the  imagination.  We  read  them  as  we  do  the  pages 
of  an  epic.  The  mysterious  destiny  of  extinction, 
which  is  taking  effect  upon  the  race,  pressing  it  off 
from  the  surface  of  the  earth,  seems  to  apply  to  its 
history  also,  which  is  crowded  out  from  its  proper 
department,  exhaled  as  it  were  into  ideal  forms,  and 
transferred  to  the  sphere  of  fancy  and  romance. 
The  reason  of  this  is  obvious.  Their  origin  and 
progress  are  buried  in  utter  oblivion.  We  behold 
them,  as  they  appeared  but  for  a  moment,  as  in  a 
dream,  and  then  vanished  away.  They  have  told 
us  no  story  of  their  earlier  fortunes,  and  they  have 
left  no  traces  of  their  existence,  or  influence  upon 
the  condition  of  mankind.  In  that  highest  sense  of 
history,  in  which  it  is  to  be  regarded  as  the  narra- 
tive of  the  continuous  progress  of  humanity,  as  the 
memorial  of  stages  of  advancement,  one  leading  on 
to  another,  by  the  law  of  cause  and  effect  in  the 
moral  world,  no  space  is  occupied  by  the  American 
tribes ;  and  it  is  the  same,  in  the  comprehensive 
view  I  am  now  taking  of  the  connection  of  the  ca- 
reer of  the  human  race  with  the  two  grand  divi- 


8 


sions  of  the  earth,  as  if  the  foot  of  man  had  never 
trodden  the  soil  of  America  until  the  Europeans 
colonized  it. 

But  while  silence  and  darkness  thus  brooded  over 
the  western  hemisphere  for  more  than  fifty  centuries, 
the  eastern  was  the  theatre  of  a  series  of  movements 
and  vicissitudes,  constituting  the  substance  of  an- 
cient history,  by  which  Providence  was  enunciating 
to  mankind  the  successive  primary  lessons  of  its  ed- 
ucation, and  preparing  it  to  enter  upon  the  career 
of  moral  and  social  advancement  designed  for  it  by 
nature,  and  which,  imperceptible  in  its  early  stages, 
has  become  a  visibly  rapid  progress  in  our  day,  but 
must  be  seen  in  results  far  higher  than  have  yet 
been  reached,  before  this  earth  can  reflect  in  un- 
dimmed  lustre  the  glory  of  Him  who  created  it  for 
the  abode  of  man,  and  placed  him  upon  it  to  cul- 
tivate and  adorn  its  surface,  develop  its  infinite 
riches,  and  bring  out,  into  the  highest  enjoyment 
and  the  brightest  light,  all  the  capacities  and  beau- 
ties of  its  occupants  and  objects. 

Before  we  bring  the  Old  World  to  the  period  of 
contact  with  the  New,  let  us  pass,  in  brief  and 
comprehensive  enumeration,  the  grand  events, 
which  rise  like  Alpine  summits  along  the  outline  of 
its  history,  and  mark  the  gradual  adaptation  of  man- 
kind for  the  new  and  more  quickening  influences 
which  sprung  into  action  when  America  was  intro- 


duced  within  the  circle  of  the  civilization  of  Christ- 
endom. 

The  great  empires,  which  had  first  passed  over 
the  field  of  vision  of  inspired  prophets,  followed 
each  other  on  the  stage  of  historic  reality.  The 
successive  and  slowly  advancing  preliminary  steps, 
by  which  a  revelation  of  divine  truth  sufticient  to 
satisfy  the  wants,  and  able  to  elevate  and  purify  to 
the  highest  degree  the  nature,  of  the  soul  of  man, 
was  to  be  ushered  in,  one  by  one  took  place.  The 
lust  of  empire,  calling  to  its  aid  the  passions  of  hu- 
manity in  ages  of  violence  and  ignorance,  had  swept 
vast  armies  over  the  face  of  nations,  and,  under  an 
overruling  Hand,  had  stirred,  and  impelled,  and 
guided  the  currents  of  power  and  thought.  At 
length,  through  the  agency,  direct  and  remote,  of 
these,  and  all  the  subsidiary  events  and  influences 
in  their  train,  the  energies  of  intellect  had  become 
sufficiently  exercised  to  give  rise  to  systems  of  phi- 
losophy and  processes  of  mental  culture  and  reflec- 
tion, and  thus  to  provide  a  foundation  for  the  recep- 
tion of  a  spiritual  theology,  and  the  elements  of  a 
true  and  absolute  morality,  depending  upon  and  em- 
braced within  it. 

While  such  influences  had  been  at  work  over  the 
Gentile  world,  how  wonderful  were  the  arrange- 
ments by  which  a  suitable  centre  of  difl'usion  was 
provided  for  the  heavenly  illumination  !  At  a 
period  far  down  beyond  the  most  distant  glimmer- 


10 

ings  of  profane  history,  a  particular  family  was 
selected  and  led  by  the  Divine  Hand  to  a  region, 
situated  at  the  threshold  of  the  three  great  conti- 
nents, on  a  conspicuous  spot,  near  which  all  com- 
munications of  commerce,  travel  and  war,  from  or 
to  Europe,  Asia  and  Africa,  necessarily  passed. 
For  wise  and  obvious  purposes,  the  chosen  family 
was  there  kept  secluded  from  the  rest  of  the  world 
for  centuries.  How  admirably  adapted  was  the 
territory  to  this  purpose  !  It  was  a  fertile  and 
most  salubrious  valley,  between  ranges  of  moun- 
tain-barriers rising  through  the  clouds,  in  many 
points,  to  wintry  elevations  of  temperature,  com- 
prising, at  different  altitudes  on  its  descending 
slopes,  every  variety  of  climate  and  production, 
and  watered  through  its  entire  length  by  a  river, 
rising  among  wild  mountains  at  one  extremity,  ex- 
panding at  intervals  into  small  inland  seas,  and  at 
the  other  extremity  not  flowing,  as  rivers  else- 
where do,  into  an  open  sea  —  for  that  would  have 
defeated  the  design  of  the  temporary  seclusion  of 
the  nation  —  but  mysteriously  vanishing  beneath 
the  barren  sands  of  inhospitable  and  untraversable 
deserts.  While  the  Divine  Wisdom  required  the 
sequestration  of  that  people  for  such  a  length  of 
time  from  the  rest  of  the  world,  and  their  imprison- 
ment within  such  limited  boundaries,  its  Benevo- 
lence selected  for  their  residence  a  region  contain- 
ing within  its  narrow  confines  every  variety  of  soil 


11 

and  temperature.  The  Israelite,  as  he  reclined  at 
sultry  noon  beneath  the  grateful  shade  of  the  palm 
and  the  olive,  on  the  banks  of  the  Jordan,  beheld 
on  either  side,  as  in  panoramic  epitome,  from  the 
luxuriance  of  the  warmest  valleys,  to  the  far-off 
mountain  pinnacles  scathed  by  the  upper  lightnings 
and  gleaming  in  crests  of  perennial  snows,  all  the 
gradations  of  animate  and  inanimate  nature,  as  they 
are  distributed  through  the  latitudes  of  the  globe 
from  the  torrid  line  to  the  frozen  pole. 

Here,  while  the  work  of  preparation  was  going 
on  without,  amidst  the  innumerable  forms  of  poly- 
theism in  the  Gentile  world,  the  great  elemental 
truth  of  the  Unity  of  God  was  sacredly  preserved 
until  the  fulness  of  the  times  for  its  universal  dis- 
semination arrived.  The  purposes  for  which  the 
Hebrew  people  had  been  selected  and  separated 
were  then  accomplished.  Temple  and  ritual,  pro- 
phecy and  priesthood,  sacrifice  and  offering,  were 
all  consummated  in  the  life,  death,  and  resurrection 
of  Him  who  was  to  be  the  Light  of  the  World. 
Judea  was  now  ready  to  be  released  from  her  se- 
clusion, and  at  this  stage  of  the  divinely  arranged 
plan  her  people  were  required  to  go  forth,  and  act 
upon,  and  mix  with,  the  rest  of  the  nations.  In 
accordance  with  that  principle,  so  signally  de- 
veloped in  many  other  conjunctures  of  human  his- 
tory, the  wrath  of  man  was  made  to  subserve  the 
Providence  of  God.     The  storm  of  war  burst  with 


12 

all  its  devastating  and  destructive  horrors  upon  the 
Holy  Land.  The  eagles  of  Rome  were  planted 
upon  the  ruins  of  its  City  and  Temple.  Not  one 
stone  was  left  upon  another  of  the  walls  of  Jerusa- 
lem, and  the  captive  people  were  scattered  by  the 
conqueror  among  all  the  nations.  They  carried 
their  Scriptures,  in  whose  prophetic  visions  and 
foreshadowing  symbols  the  seeds  of  Christianity 
were  wrapped  up,  with  them  into  every  scene  of 
their  exile,  and  every  path  of  their  wanderings. 

The  wisdom  of  the  Divine  Being  in  the  selection 
of  Judea  to  be  the  centre  from  which  the  light  of 
true  religion  was  to  irradiate  the  surrounding 
world,  was  proved  by  the  immediate  results. 
During  the  first  age  of  the  Church,  in  which  Christ- 
ianity attained  a  diffusion  more  rapid  and  extensive 
than  it  has  in  all  subsequent  centuries,  it  spread 
over  a  similar  extent  of  territory  and  population, 
and  penetrated  to  an  equal  distance,  in  Europe, 
Asia,  and  Africa.  In  the  developments  of  the  ages 
yet  to  come,  when  the  routes  of  travel  and  inter- 
communication between  the  three  ancient  conti- 
nents, and  between  America  and  the  East,  shall  be 
laid  through  Palestine,  whose  scenes  will  thus 
become  familiar  to  all  mankind,  then  will  the  Pro- 
vidence, which  made  that  the  theatre  of  the  reli- 
gious history  of  the  race,  become  justified  and  dis- 
played in  all  its  lustre  and  glory. 

It  is  unnecessary  for  me  to  remind  you  of  the 


13 

prominent  events  and  influences  brought  to  bear 
upon  the  condition  of  mankind,  subsequent  to  the 
Christian  revelation  —  the  decline  and  fall  of  the 
Roman  dominion,  including,  before  it  fell,  the  es- 
tablishment of  Christianity  as  the  religion  of  the 
empire  —  the  influx  and  commixture  of  vast  tribes 
of  barbarians  —  the  rise  and  spread  of  the  Mahom- 
etan power,  preserving  affrighted  Christendom  from 
the  complete  stupor  into  which  superstition,  igno- 
rance, and  priestcraft,  if  aided  by  entire  security, 
would  have  lulled  it  —  the  Crusades,  gathering  into 
mighty  hosts  the  population  of  States,  transferring 
them  by  thousands  and  tens  of  thousands  into  new 
scenes,  thus  awakening  in  their  minds  fresh  and 
stirring  ideas  and  on  their  return  bringing  back 
and  scattering  over  benighted  and  barbarian  Europe 
the  elements  of  oriental  refinement  and  elegance  — 
the  amazing  impulse  given  to  thought  and  knowl- 
edge by  the  invention  and  use  of  the  movable  type 
—  the  opening  of  straight  paths  across  the  mighty 
deep  by  the  discovery  of  the  polarity  of  the  mag- 
netized needle,  "  the  faithful  pilot,"  as  the  mari- 
ner's compass  has  been  felicitously  personified  by 
the  most  eloquent  of  American  writers,*  offering  his 
services  without  money  and  without  price  to  every 
navigator,  sitting  serene,  steadfast,  and  unwearied 
at  the  helm  through  all  storms,  and  without  star, 
or  landmark,  or  plummet,  steering  over  the  widest 

*  Edward  Everett  —  Orations,  p.  255. 


14 

oceans  with  unerring  accuracy  and  absolute  assur- 
ance—  and  at  last,  the  Reformation,  breaking  the 
lethargy  of  uniformity,  in  which  Christendom  was 
sleeping  the  sleep  of  death,  and  through  the  infinite 
divisions  and  conflicts  of  creed  and  practice  to 
which  it  gave  rise,  disclosing  and  enforcing  the 
great  vital  principle  of  true  reform  and  renova- 
tion —  the  rights,  the  claims,  and  the  power  of 
every  individual  soul. 

The  combinations  were  now  completed.  Beneath 
the  surface  and  in  the  heart  of  society  the  ingredi- 
ents were  mingling  and  working,  whose  final  results 
will  be  the  enfranchisement  and  elevation  of  hu- 
manity. But  in  the  Old  World,  the  forms  of  op- 
pression, superstition  and  error  had  become  so 
intertwisted  and  riveted  to  each  other  and  to  the 
radical  elements  of  our  social  nature,  and  had 
spread  such  a  thick  incrustation,  as  it  were,  over 
its  entire  surface,  that  the  expansive  force  of  inter- 
nal elements  alone  could  not  have  thrown  them  off 
without  an  explosion  which  would  have  prostrated 
in  desolation  and  scattered  in  fragments  the  whole 
fabric  of  society.  It  was  necessary  that  an  influ- 
ence, cooperating  with  that  within,  should  be 
brought  to  bear  from  without,  and  then  the  process 
of  melioration  would  at  once  be  safe  and  sure, 
the  forms  and  monuments  of  error  and  evil  would 
melt  gradually  away,  and  the  structures  of  truth, 
freedom,  and  righteousness,  rise  in  their  places. 


15 

At  this  moment,  then,  we  witness — beyond  all 
comparison —  the  most  sublime  occurrence  in  human 
history.  No  one  event,  with  the  exception,  of 
course,  of  those  which  belong  to  the  sphere  of  re- 
vealed religion,  in  all  the  past  or  future  annals  of 
the  world,  can  approach  it.  We  behold  the  Al- 
mighty Hand  drawing  forth,  as  from  the  depths  of 
darkness  and  vacuity,  the  American  continents, 
and  bringing  them  into  electric  contact  and  com- 
munication with  surcharged  Europe.  The  ideas 
struggling  into  existence  there,  and  struggling  in 
vain  against  the  mountain-weight  of  ancient  abuses, 
prejudices  and  ignorance,  and  the  banded  power  of 
all  interested  in  the  then  existing  state  of  things, 
were  welcomed  to  a  free  exercise  and  display  on 
the  unoccupied  shores  of  America,  and  flourish- 
ing here  into  maturity,  have  passed  back  again  to 
aid  in  the  regeneration  of  the  Old  World.  The  em- 
pire of  darkness  had,  from  the  beginning,  prevailed 
over  this  hemisphere.  The  elements  of  the  world's 
redemption  had  been  imparted  to  the  opposite 
hemisphere.  In  order  that  they  might  take  full 
effect,  and  renovate  the  entire  race  of  man,  an  ac- 
tion and  re-action  were  required  to  be  established 
between  these  two  great  divisions  of  the  earth. 
Europe,  which  in  this  view  of  the  subject  may  be 
regarded  as  including  the  entire  eastern  hemi- 
sphere, and  America,  came  into  communication; 
and  from  that  moment  humanity  received  an  impulse 


16 

which  has  visibly  and  steadily  accelerated  its  pro- 
gress. The  effects  produced  by  the  free  and  fearless 
experiments  in  the  department  of  government  and 
human  rights,  here  in  process,  upon  the  feudal  fix- 
tures and  rigid  conservatism  of  the  Old  World,  and 
in  the  opposite  direction,  in  the  forms  of  literature, 
science,  fashion,  and  emigration,  although  in  par- 
ticular instances  and  phases  dreaded  and  lamented 
by  some,  are,  upon  the  whole,  most  salutary  and 
reciprocally  beneficent.  It  is  not  to  be  imagined  that 
so  mighty  a  power  as  the  moral  influence  upon  each 
other  of  continents  in  inter-communication,  will  al- 
ways operate  gently  and  insensibly.  The  subtle  elec- 
tricity is  continually  diffusing  and  equalizing  its  life- 
sustaining  and  life-imparting  energies  —  it  ever  flows 
from  cloud  to  earth,  and  from  earth  to  cloud.  From 
time  to  time,  however,  particular  combinations  oc- 
cur, of  atmosphere,  wind,  and  heat,  which  give  to 
this  ordinarily  imperceptible  and  always  salutary 
process  a  visible  and  terrific  form  —  the  lightnings 
flash,  and  the  deep  thunder  rolls.  But  the  storm 
is  of  brief  duration,  its  fury  is  rapidly  expending, 
the  darkness  is  breaking  and  disappearing,  the  land- 
scape is  refreshed,  the  air  is  growing  purer  and 
more  exhilarating,  and  the  sky  is  brightening  over 
our  heads. 

Turning  from  the  contemplation  of  the  event  we 
commemorate  in  this  broad  and  philosophical  aspect. 


17 

let  us  now  endeavour  to  bring  it,  in  its  actual  de- 
tails, before  our  imagination. 

The  Mayflower,  weather-beaten  and  tempest- 
tossed,  has  reached  the  shores  of  America.  The 
Divine  superintendence,  while  it  has  preserved  her, 
and  the  precious  freight  she  bears,  from  being 
swallowed  up  in  the  sea,  so  overruled  the  winds 
and  currents,  and,  as  is  thought  by  some,  the  mo- 
tives of  her  commander,  that  she  made  the  coast 
at  a  very  different  point  from  that  designed  by  the 
colonists,  and  where  —  although  industry,  temper- 
ance, intelligence,  and  hardy  enterprise  have  gath- 
ered in  our  day  as  happy  and  prosperous  a  popula- 
tion as  can  be  found  in  any  quarter  of  the  world  — 
the  aspect  and  conformation  of  the  land  present  as 
unwelcome  and  desolate  a  spectacle  as  weary  mari- 
ner ever  looks  upon.  Reefs  and  shoals  are  strown 
along  in  front  of  the  shore  to  forbid  and  repel  ap- 
proach. Above  and  beyond  the  beaches,  all  that 
can  be  seen  are  desert  banks  and  hills  of  sand. 
Cheerless  and  dreary  as  it  now  appears,  although 
crowned  with  light-houses  and  interspersed  with 
the  innumerable  sails  of  a  vast  coasting  trade  and 
foreign  commerce,  how  dismal  and  disheartening  the 
scene  must  have  been  to  the  Pilgrims,  as  they  ap- 
proached it  amidst  the  storms  and  ice  of  winter ! 
At  length,  after  many  days  and  nights  spent  in  ex- 
ploring Cape  Cod  and  Barnstable  Bay,  in  search  of 
a  safe  and  convenient  resting-place,  they  came  to 


18 

anchor  in  the  harbour  of  Plymouth.  As  the  boat, 
containing  the  first  division  of  the  passengers,  put 
off  from  the  side  of  the  vessel,  a  scene  was  pre- 
sented inexhaustibly  rich  in  all  of  visible  and  moral 
interest  that  can  be  needed  to  kindle  the  imagina- 
tion, fill  the  meditative  mind,  or  awaken  in  the 
heart  tender  and  admiring  affections.  The  painter 
and  the  poet  have  already  drawn  inspiration  from  it, 
and  it  will  forever  attract  and  sustain  the  highest 
powers  of  their  genius. 

"  Wild  was  the  day  ;  the  wintry  sea 

Moaned  sadly  on  New-England's  strand, 
When  first  the  thoughtful  and  the  free, 
Our  fathers,  trod  the  desert  land."  * 

The  waters,  darkened  by  the  clouds  which,  in 
that  season,  so  prevailingly  overhang  them,  —  the 
rocky,  ice-clad  coast  —  the  islands  and  the  main,  a 
frozen,  shelterless  solitude — sky,  sea,  shore,  were 
all  invested  with  their  most  forbidding  aspect.  The 
shivering  exiles  slowly  approach  in  their  deeply- 
laden  long-boat.  They  search  for  a  safe  and  con- 
venient landing-place,  and  make  their  way  towards 
a  rock  with  a  low  and  level  surface,  imbedded  in 
the  gravelly  beach,  and  extending  from  the  bank 
into  the  surf.  As  they  leaped  upon  that  rock, 
desolate  as  was  the  scene  around  them,  and  dark 
as  was  their  prospect,  a  burden  was  lifted,  at  once, 

*  William  CuUen  Bryant. 


19 

from  their  long-oppressed  bosoms.  As  the  solid 
continent  was  felt  beneath  their  feet,  their  devout 
hearts  ascended  in  miutterable  gratitude  to  that 
Divine  mercy  which  had  borne  them  over  the 
boisterous  deep,  and  guided  them  in  that  perilous 
season  through  the  dangers  of  a  coast  which  mari- 
ners approach  even  now,  at  all  seasons,  with  pe- 
culiar anxiety,  and  which  had  opened  to  them  an 
asylum  where  their  views  of  Christian  freedom  and 
social  progress  might  be  indulged  without  let  or 
hindrance  from  man.  But  great  as  was  their  joy, 
fervent  as  their  gratitude,  and  lofty  and  far-reaching 
as  their  faith  in  the  Providence  of  whose  great  de- 
signs they  were  the  instruments,  little  could  they 
foresee  or  imagine  the  lustre  of  renown  which 
would  reflect  back  through  all  subsequent  ages 
upon  that  hour  of  their  experience. 

As  time  discloses  the  grand  and  beneficent  re- 
sults to  humanity,  in  all  climes  and  regions,  of  the 
colonization  of  America  by  enlightened,  free,  and 
Christian  men  —  as  the  practicability  of  popular 
sovereignty  and  social  institutions,  based  upon  the 
principle  of  unlimited  progress  and  reform,  be- 
comes more  and  more  signally  displayed  in  America, 
and  more  and  more  appreciated  in  the  Old  World, 
the  halo  of  glory  encircling  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  will 
brighten  in  the  retrospect  of  grateful  generations. 
Already  is  a  homage  rendered,  and  a  triumph 
awarded  them,  greater  than  ever  monarch  or  war- 


20 

rior  won.  On  each  recurring  anniversary  their  de- 
scendants, dwelling  in  the  ancient  Commonwealth 
including  within  its  limits  the  Rock  of  Plymouth, 
assemble  in  joyful  and  reverent  crowds  around  it ; 
and  in  the  remotest  quarters  of  their  dispersion 
throughout  the  vast  republic,  sprung  from  founda- 
tions which  they  laid,  pressing  on,  as  they  do, 
among  the  very  foremost  at  the  extreme  verge  of 
our  ever-expanding  empire,  the  posterity  of  the 
Pilgrims  look  back  with  filial  love  and  increasing 
interest  to  the  day  and  the  scene  we  are  commemo- 
rating. The  22d  of  December  is  becoming  honored 
and  consecrated  by  public  observances  at  the  prin- 
cipal centres  of  population  in  all  parts  of  the  Union  ; 
and  it  needs  no  greater  insight  of  the  future  than 
all  eyes  possess,  to  behold,  before  many  years  have 
passed,  the  sons  of  New-England  gathering,  as  you 
are  gathered  here,  on  the  return  of  this  day,  in 
cities  whose  foundations  remain  to  be  laid,  and  in 
capitals  of  States  whose  stars  are  yet  to  rise  into 
the  crowded  galaxy  of  our  flag,  beyond  the  Rocky 
Mountains,  and  on  the  shores  of  that  western  ocean, 
which,  as  the  very  charters  of  the  earliest  Colonies 
witness,  was  the  only  limit  the  first  founders  of  our 
country  would  recognize  or  brook  to  their  visions 
of  liberty  and  happiness  for  the  whole  continent. 

"  Where  the  sun,  with  softer  fires, 
Looks  on  the  vast  Pacific's  sleep, 
The  children  of  the  Pilgrim  sires 

This  hallowed  day,  like  us,  shall  keep." 


21 

Perhaps  it  may  be  expected  by  some  that  I 
should  recount,  on  this  occasion,  the  fearful  suffer- 
ings, the  wasting  privations,  the  heroic  endurance, 
and  the  brave  deeds  of  the  earliest  Pilgrim  colo- 
nists ;  the  difficulties  they  met  and  surmounted, 
and  thq  persevering  fidelity  with  which  they  held 
on,  while  so  many  of  the  first  adventurers  to  Ame- 
rica retreated  from  the  enterprise  or  sunk  beneath 
its  trials  and  exposures,  to  the  noble  purpose  of 
securing  to  their  descendants  a  permanent  home  of 
liberty  and  religion  on  this  continent.  The  theme 
is  both  fruitful  and  attractive.  Whoever  seeks  for 
topics  of  the  noblest  dignity  or  the  tenderest  in- 
terest, will  find  them  in  the  chronicles  that  have 
been  fortunately  preserved  of  the  first  settlers  of 
the  shores  of  Massachusetts  Bay.*  And,  indeed, 
all  along  the  track  of  the  history  of  the  Colonies, 
the  brightest  illustrations  of  personal  bravery,  for- 
titude, and  magnanimity,  and  of  political  integrity 
and  wisdom,  are  thickly  scattered.  But  others 
have  treated  these  subjects  more  fully  than  my 
limits  permit,  and  with  such  success  as  leaves  no 
occasion  for  a  repetition.  Venturing  to  assume, 
therefore,  that  your  own  recollections  of  what  you 

*  Two  very  valuable  and  interesting  volumes  have  recently  been 
published,  comprising  the  most  important  and  authoritative  documents, 
under  the  editorial  care  of  Rev.  Alexander  Young,  D.  D.,  of  Bos- 
ton, and  enriched,  in  the  notes,  with  the  stores  of  his  learning.  The 
one  is  entitled,  "  Chronicles  of  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  of  the  Colony  of 
Plymouth  ;  "  the  other  "  Chronicles  of  the  First  Planters  of  the  Colony 
of  Massachusetts  Bay." 


22 

have  heard  and  read  will  supply  enough  to  bring 
your  minds  and  hearts  into  sympathy  with  the  oc- 
casion, I  propose  to  draw  from  the  contemplation 
of  the  character  and  history  of  the  first  and  the 
early  subsequent  generations  of  New-England,  some 
general  considerations,  which  may  serve  to,  enable 
us  and  our  successors  better  to  fulfil  the  great  pur- 
poses to  which  America  was  consecrated  by  the 
virtue,  the  faith,  and  the  prayers  of  the  Pilgrim 
Fathers. 

It  would  be  impossible,  in  a  single  discourse,  to 
do  full  justice  to  the  great  and  noble  denomination 
of  men  to  which  the  founders  of  New-England  be- 
longed. The  Puritans  are  acknowledged  by  their 
enemies  to  have  breathed  the  spirit  of  liberty  into 
the  British  constitution  ;  and  the  freedom  and  pros- 
perity of  America  are  the  record  of  their  glory.  So 
great  is  the  preponderance  of  their  services  to  man- 
kind over  all  the  faults  that  can  be  charged  upon 
them,  that  those  who  most  affectionately  and  proudly 
cherish  their  memory  fear  not,  but  rejoice,  to  have 
their  merits  brought  into  discussion.  Their  errors 
provide  the  shade  needful  to  give  full  effect  to  the 
light  that  beams  from  their  virtues.  Denying  my- 
self, on  the  present  occasion,  the  gratification  of 
expatiating,  in  detail,  upon  the  character  and  career 
of  the  Puritans,  I  would  only  observe  that  the  mon- 
uments of  their  wisdom,  heroism,  and   greatness 


23 

tower  far,  far  above  all  other  objects  of  political 
interest,  in  the  perspective  of  the  past,  and  in  the 
spectacle  of  the  present.  Those  monuments  are 
the  Commonwealth  of  England,  with  the  civil  wars 
that  led  to  it,  and  the  Colonization  of  New-England, 
terminating  in  the  establishment  of  the  Republic  of 
the  United  States  of  America.  What  description, 
or  body  of  men,  since  the  world  began,  has  accom- 
plished, by  mere  human  means,  a  work  to  be  com- 
pared with  this  ? 

The  history  of  the  Commonwealth  of  England  has 
never  yet  been  adequately  written.  When  justice 
shall  have  been  done  to  the  illustrious  theme,  it  will 
be  acknowledged  that  in  no  movement  of  mankind 
has  the  mind  of  a  people  exhibited  a  grander  devel- 
opment, or  the  cause  of  human  rights  and  social  re- 
form been  more  faithfully,  intelligently  and  bravely 
vindicated.  In  the  earnest  struggles  and  lofty  as- 
pirations of  the  champions  of  liberty  and  humanity, 
the  profoundest  depths  of  political  science  were  then 
fathomed  and  explored  ;  and  if  it  had  been  possible 
in  the  Old  World,  at  that  period,  for  a  government 
founded  upon  the  principles  of  freedom,  and  ex- 
pressing the  will  and  sovereignty  of  the  people,  to 
have  succeeded,  the  English  Commonwealth  would 
have  been  permanently  established,  and  the  great 
spirits  who  administered  it,  in  its  different  stages, 
have  enjoyed,  from  the  first,  what  will  be  rendered 
to  them  at  last  —  the  admiration  of  the  world. 


24 

As  it  respects  the  monument  reared  by  the  Puri- 
tans on  this  side  of  the  ocean,  I  would  only  say, 
that  the  most  condensed  and  summary  review  of  the 
free  institutions  they  planted,  and  which,  protected 
by  their  courage  and  constancy,  and  deriving  the 
principle  of  inextinguishable  vitality  from  their  spi- 
rit, are  now  flourishing,  maturely  developed,  in 
republican  States  gathering  under  the  American 
Union,  would  occupy  a  wider  space  than  can  be  al- 
lowed to  an  anniversary  address.  History,  in  its 
most  elaborate  and  classical  form,  requires  its  am- 
plest folds  to  embrace  them  ;  and  in  this,  the  most 
appropriate  office  of  history,  foreign  and  domestic 
genius  are  emulating  each  other. 

Descending  from  these  higher  and  more  compre- 
hensive views,  I  desire  to  call  your  attention  to  one 
or  two  particular  points  in  the  example  of  the  Pil- 
grim Fathers,  which  may  be  profitably  pondered  at 
the  present  time. 

One  of  the  chief  elements  of  their  character,  and 
sources  of  their  strength  and  success,  was  their  ap- 
preciation of  the  greatness  and  importance  of  the 
sphere  which  every  man  occupies,  in  his  individual 
capacity,  as  distinguished  from  his  relations  to  the 
State,  or  to  society  in  any  of  its  forms.  The  energy 
and  influence  of  each  private  person,  the  contribu- 
tion each  individual  may  make  to  the  general  wel- 
fare, the  might  with  which  a  free  arm,  working  the 


25 

will  of  a  free  spirit,  is  clothed,  without  aid  from 
government,  and  in  spite  of  the  frowns  of  govern- 
ment, in  fields  of  action  which  government  cannot 
close,  —  this  element  of  character  was  developed 
by  the  Qarly  colonists  with  more  power  than  by  any 
other  community. 

The  Christian  revelation,  by  bringing  all  mankind 
into  an  equal  and  immediate  relation  to  the  Univer- 
sal Father,  had  announced  the  dignity  of  each  sep- 
arate soul.  But  the  political  institutions  and  social 
forms  of  mankind,  in  all  nations,  had  been  wrought 
by  ambition,  love  of  power,  superstition  and  igno- 
rance, into  a  system  in  which  individual  rights  were 
entirely  overlooked  or  deliberately  sacrificed.  The 
State,  as  such,  or,  as  it  really  was  practically,  the 
ruling  power,  was  everything ;  the  People  were 
nothing.  Instead  of  the  king  being  for  the  welfare 
of  the  country,  the  country  and  all  who  belonged 
to  it  were  for  the  welfare  of  the  king.  Instead  of 
the  priest  being  for  the  good  of  the  church,  the 
church  was  for  the  good  of  the  priest.  The  ten- 
dency of  every  institution  and  mode  of  social  ac- 
tion, political,  ecclesiastical  and  military,  was  to 
merge  the  bulk  of  mankind  into  masses,  and  limit 
free  individual  action  to  monarchs,  popes,  and  gen- 
erals. The  few,  who  were  the  heads  of  the  State 
or  Church,  exercised  arbitrary  and  unlimited  sway; 
the  vast  residue  of  mankind  walked  the  weary  round 
of  prescribed  and  servile  labors,  whose  fruits  they 


26 

were  not  permitted  freely  to  enjoy,  and  to  which 
they  were  forbidden  to  aspire.  Their  wills  were 
enslaved,  and  their  actions  controlled  by  the  influ- 
ence of  a  despotism,  operating  either  through  the 
arbitrary  edicts  of  irresponsible  rulers,  qr  fixed 
usages,  with  which  long-continued  and  hopeless 
subjection  had  crushed  their  spirits  into  an  implicit 
acquiescence.  The  Reformation  had,  to  some  ex- 
tent, startled  the  masses  to  a  perception  of  their 
rights  as  individuals ;  but  the  fatal  schemes  to 
which  its  leaders  lent  their  ears,  pursuing  the  pest- 
ilent phantom  of  uniformity,  which,  from  the  begin- 
ning to  this  hour,  has  defrauded  the  soul  of  man  of 
its  birthright  and  kept  the  fires  of  persecution  burn- 
ing, again  sealed  the  prospects  of  individual  free- 
dom of  spirit.  The  great  discoveries  of  that  period, 
and  the  stirring  influences  that  followed  in  their 
train,  held  out,  for  a  season,  encouragement  that 
essential  reforms  might  be  effected  ;  but  the  result 
of  the  operation  of  new  ideas  in  the  civil  wars  of 
England,  and  of  the  struggles  for  the  rights  of  man- 
kind, as  individuals,  in  other  parts  of  the  Old  World, 
even  up  to  the  present  time,  afford  conclusive  evi- 
dence that,  if  a  fairer  field  had  not  been  opened  in 
America,  the  cause  of  the  people,  as  such,  could 
never  have  made  effectual  efforts  to  throw  off"  the 
burdens  fastened  upon  transatlantic  Christendom  by 
ages  of  feudal  bondage. 

But    from    the    moment   the  European    colonist 


27 

planted  his  foot  on  this  continent,  the  energies,  the 
rights,  and  the  dignity  of  man,  as  an  individual, 
were  secured  for  ever.  The  necessities  of  his  sit- 
uation rendered  this  result  inevitable.  The  contri- 
butions of  every  hand  were  needed  to  perform  the 
labors  indispensable  to  the  existence  of  the  com- 
pany, and  of  every  head  to  devise  and  conduct  the 
means  of  encountering  the  difficulties  with  which 
they  were  surrounded.  The  unlimited  extent  of 
the  territory,  and  the  limited  productiveness  of  the 
soil,  led  them  to  scatter  over  the  face  of  the  coun- 
try, at  some  distance  from  each  other  in  the  same 
community,  and  to  select  for  their  townships  the 
most  fertile  and  otherwise  eligible  districts,  how- 
ever remote  from  previous  settlements.  Every 
head  of  a  family  had  obtained  by  religious  illumina- 
tion and  faith,  before  he  left  his  home  in  the  old 
country,  strong  and  clear  conceptions  of  the  sanc- 
tity and  value  of  his  own  spirit,  and  of  his  dignity 
as  the  disciple  of  Him,  who,  in  becoming  the  only 
master  of  the  soul,  had  redeemed  it  from  all  sub- 
jection to  human  authority.  The  reception  of  the 
grace  of  God  into  his  heart,  of  which  his  speculative 
theology  and  practical  piety  both  gave  evidence, 
imparted  to  him  an  inward  sense  of  equality  with 
the  highest  potentates  of  earth.  He,  who  looked 
forward  with  calm  assurance  to  a  heavenly  crown 
of  glory  and  immortality,  would  have  felt  no  abase- 
ment in  the  presence  of  kings.     After  his  establish- 


28 

ment  in  the  wilds  of  America,  he  surveyed  the 
broad  acres  which  were  all  his  own,  and  his  exclu- 
sively, unencumbered  by  feudal  or  baronial  vassal- 
age, subject  to  no  tribute,  taxation,  or  service.  As 
far  as  his  eye  could  reach  into  the  depths  of  the 
forest,  to  the  summits  of  the  hills,  along  the  courses 
of  the  streams,  and  over  the  bosom  of  the  ocean, 
there  was  none  to  dispute  his  possession,  or  inter- 
fere with  his  movements,  or  in  any  way  restrain  or 
affect  the  exercises  of  his  will  or  his  faculties.  Such 
a  person,  thus  situated,  could  not  but  have  con- 
stantly exulted  in  his  freedom,  and  have  felt  with 
every  pulsation  his  power  and  his  dignity  as  a  man. 
The  first  settlers  of  America,  by  the  very  act  of 
their  emigration,  proclaimed  their  sense  of  the  su- 
preme importance  of  man  as  an  individual  —  of  his 
superiority  in  that  aspect  to  all  the  properties  he 
possesses  as  a  member  of  political  society,  as  the 
subject  and  citizen  of  a  State.  They  had  long  felt 
government  only  in  its  pressure,  and  had  cherished 
the  idea  of  a  removal  beyond  its  reach,  whatever 
amount  of  suffering  that  removal  in  other  respects 
might  occasion,  as  the  greatest  of  blessings.  "  Open 
to  us  "  they  exclaimed,  "  a  refuge  from  civil  and 
ecclesiastical  oppression,  and  we  will  fly  to  it,  no 
matter  how  fiercely  the  wide  ocean  opens  its  mouth 
to  swallow  us,  or  with  what  terrors  the  wintry  wil- 
derness may  threaten  us."  And  when,  on  arranging 
their  condition  in  America,  they  found  it  necessary 


29 

to  construct  a  government  for  the  preservation  of 
order  and  justice,  and  for  the  regular  administration 
of  the  ordinances  and  public  services  of  religion, 
they  carefully  sought  to  reserve  to  themselves  as 
much  power  as  possible,  depositing  as  large  a  pro- 
portion as  they  could  of  what  it  was  absolutely  ne- 
cessary to  delegate,  within  a  sphere  so  limited  as 
to  be  under  their  ow^n  eyes,  in  the  parish  and  the 
town,  and  transacting  in  primary  assemblies,  as  far 
as  practicable,  their  own  public  business. 

It  is  true,  that,  misled  by  the  spirit  still  disas- 
trously prevalent,  they  soon  began  to  employ  the 
enginery  of  State  and  Church  to  w^ork  out  Utopian 
schemes  of  reform  —  by  legislation  and  discipline 
encroaching  upon  private  rights,  and  invading  per- 
sonal freedom  at  every  point  where  the  slightest 
evil  was  supposed  to  lurk.  But  these  attempts  to 
subdue  the  individual  character  into  conformity 
with  standards  set  up  by  authority,  were  ultimately 
found  to  be  vain  and  fruitless.  The  circumstances 
of  their  situation,  already  sketched,  the  ideas  at  the 
foundation  of  their  religious  faith  and  experience, 
and  the  systems  of  education  they  established,  pre- 
vailed over  all  counteracting  influences,  and  gave  a 
development  and  force  to  individual  intellect  and 
will  —  to  every  original  peculiarity  and  tendency 
of  genius  —  of  which  the  results  are  seen  in  the 
wonderful  progress  and  present  prosperity  of  the 
States  they  founded,  and  in  the  enterprise,  energy. 


30 

ingenuity,  and  success  of  their  descendants  wher- 
ever scattered.  The  power  of  character,  growing 
out  of  this  free  development  of  the  turn  of  mind  of 
every  individual,  and  the  feeling  connected  with  it, 
that  each  one  may  and  must  choose  his  own  course, 
open  his  own  path,  and  determine  his  own  condi- 
tion, has  made  New-England  impregnable,  and 
covered  her  comparatively  stubborn  and  sterile  soil 
with  abundance.  This  is  the  secret  magic  by 
which  her  sons  command  success  and  wealth  wher- 
ever they  wander.  The  States  included  under 
that  name  have  contracted  limits,  and  are  subject 
to  many  disadvantages  ;  on  the  expanding  map,  or 
in  the  multiplying  census  of  the  Union,  they  may 
appear  feeble  and  insignificant.  But  their  prospe- 
rity is  sure,  and  will  be  perpetual.  No  power  of 
party,  no  sectional  prejudice,  no  error  of  policy, 
no  injustice  of  government,  can  permanently  or  es- 
sentially check  the  career  of  progress  in  wealth 
and  civilization,  along  which  the  energies  of  indi- 
vidual ingenuity,  enterprise,  intelligence,  and  in- 
dustry have  from  the  beginning  impelled  them. 

When  this  force  of  individual  character,  this  con- 
sciousness of  inherent  power,  is  once  brought  into 
exercise,  and  becomes  habitual,  entering  into  the 
frame  of  the  mind,  then  is  man  clothed  with  his 
true  strength.  Obstacle,  peril  and  suffering,  serve 
only  to  reveal  in  the  heart  sources  of  energy,  hid- 
den and  undreamed-of  before.     The  great  master  of 


31 

the  drama  and  of  human  nature  expounds  the  prin- 
ciple. 

"  The  fire  i'  the  flint 


Shows  not,  till  it  be  struck." 

One  of  the  most  accomplished  of  the  Latin  clas- 
sics declares  the  effect  which  trial  and  difficulty 
exert  in  bringing  out  this  mighty  force  of  character, 
"  Adversa  magnos  probant."  All  history  and  obser- 
vation demonstrate  it.  The  mind,  thrown  upon  its 
own  resources,  and  summoning  them  resolutely  to 
the -effort,  rises  with  every  emergency,  and  con- 
fronts and  surmounts  all  that  can  be  brought 
against  it.  Such  w^as  the  discipline  of  the  early 
New-England  character.  Cold,  hunger,  disease, 
desolation,  grappled  with  it  in  vain,  at  the  begin- 
ning. Neither  the  tomahawk  nor  war-whoop  of 
the  Indian,  nor  all  the  terrors  which  hung  over 
their  defenceless  hamlets,  could  subdue  hearts 
armed  with  this  inward  strength.  It  grew  with 
constant  and  healthful  vigor  through  all  vicissi- 
tudes. The  neglect  of  the  mother-country  could 
not  cast  a  shade  dark  or  damp  enough  to  wither 
it  —  the  most  violent  storms  of  its  anger  could  not 
break  it.  Charters  were  torn  away  by  the  ruthless 
hand  of  arbitrary  power,  and  every  resource  of  des- 
potism was  exhausted  to  curb  and  crush  it.  But 
all  was  in  vain.  The  people,  severally  and  univer- 
sally, had  realized   their  rights    and  their   power, 


32 

as  men  ;  and  a  determination  to  advance  their  own 
condition,  to  retain  and  enlarge  their  privileges, 
thus  pervading  the  entire  population,  made  them 
superior  to  all  local  disadvantages,  and  triumphant 
over  all  opposition.  It  placed  their  prosperity  be- 
yond the  reach  of  power  or  fortune.  So  long  as 
the  arm  of  the  settler  could  wield  an  axe,  or  his 
hand  cast  a  vote  ;  so  long  as  the  district  school- 
house  opened  its  doors  to  impart  the  knowledge 
and  the  mental  culture,  enabling  him  to  under- 
stand and  maintain  his  rights,  or  the  village  church 
lifted  its  spire  into  the  heavens  to  remind  hiei  of 
that  immortal  element,  which,  glowing  in  his 
breast,  placed  him  on  a  level  with  the  highest  of 
his  fellow-men,  it  would  be  impossible  to  enslave 
him,  or  prevent  his  progress. 

It  is  the  great  advantage  of  free  institutions,  when 
aided  by  suitable  provisions  of  education,  that  they 
give  opportunity  for  natural  diversities  to  display 
themselves.  No  permanent  castes  hang  their  dead 
weights  on  the  community.  Each  individual,  as  he 
enters  the  scenes  of  active  life,  instead  of  being 
compelled  to  walk  in  the  same  path  with  his  ances- 
tors, chooses  his  own  occupation,  marks  out  a  new 
course  for  himself,  and  by  a  special  combination 
adapts  the  voluntary  conditions  of  his  existence  to 
his  own  peculiar  tastes  and  faculties.  This  impul- 
sive projection  of  each  individual,  according  to  his 
peculiar  nature,  into  the  engagements  and  struggles 


33 

of  business  and  of  life  in  all  its  forms  ;  this  self- 
originating  and  self-stimulating  earnestness  of  pur- 
suit, taking  effect  upon  a  whole  people,  is  well 
worthy  of  the  study  of  the  philosophic  mind.  We 
sometimes  hear  it  spoken  of  with  a  sneer.  The 
determined  assurance,  and  ingenious  contrivances, 
and  indefatigable  perseverance  by  which  New-Eng- 
landers  push  their  fortunes  in  the  world,  in  partic- 
ular instances  may  justly  excite  ridicule,  contempt, 
or  aversion  ;  but  regarded  in  a  comprehensive  and 
general  aspect,  as  a  pervading  and  distinctive  ele- 
ment of  national  character,  such  a  spirit  of  enter- 
prise rises  into  greatness,  and  becomes  truly  impos- 
ing. It  secures  perpetual  and  boundless  progress. 
It  diffuses  prosperity.  It  evokes  all  latent  power. 
It  silently,  and  by  a  most  benignant  process,  wins 
for  a  nation  nobler  victories  and  a  greater  dominion 
than  the  mightiest  armies  could  have  achieved. 

It  was  not  a  mere  personal  boast,  but  the  authen- 
tic and  genuine  utterance  of  this  unconquerable  and 
all-conquering  spirit  of  individual  enterprise  and 
energy,  when,  a  short  time  since,  a  distinguished 
merchant,  himself  a  most  signal  illustration,  in  his 
history  and  fortune,  of  the  power  of  such  a  spirit  to 
command  wealth  and  influence,  in  an  argument  on 
the  protective  policy  of  the  country,  speaking  in  the 
name  of  the  industry  of  New-England,  said  to  the 
national  legislators,  "  Alter,  reduce,  destroy  the 
tariff;  pass  whatever  laws  you  may,  adopt  whatever 


34 

policy  you  choose,  we  will  make  money  J'  Surely, 
the  history  of  the  action  of  government  upon  the  la- 
bor, business,  and  capital  of  New-England,  through 
the  entire  period  of  its  dependence  on  the  mother- 
country,  and  I  may  say,  without  involving  myself  in 
party  passions,  up  to  this  very  hour,  bears  one  con- 
tinued triumphant  testimony  to  the  superiority  of 
energy  and  intelligence,  pervading  a  people,  to  all 
the  powers  that  government  can  possibly  exert. 
When  their  industry,  bravery,  hardihood,  and  skill, 
in  all  the  multiplied  forms  and  channels  of  foreign 
commerce,  were  reaping  harvests  of  wealth  on  ev- 
ery sea,  you  closed  their  ports  by  embargo  and  war. 
They  at  once  transferred  the  scene  of  their  achieve- 
ments. Forests  vanished  before  them  ;  new  re- 
gions poured  forth  riches  from  their  fresh  and  un- 
exhausted bosoms  ;  and  everywhere  the  sounds  of 
the  water-wheel,  the  trip-hammer,  and  the  steam- 
engine  were  heard  mingling  with  the  voices  of  na- 
ture and  of  men.  If,  after  having  compelled  them 
to  give  this  direction  to  their  capital  and  enterprise, 
reversing  the  policy  of  your  laws,  you  attempt  to 
crush  the  manufacturing  and  mechanical  interests 
of  such  a  people,  their  ingenuity  and  energy,  con- 
stituting an  inexhaustible  resource,  because  one  to 
which  all  severally  contribute  spontaneously,  per- 
petually, and  to  the  whole  extent  of  their  power, 
will  probably  be  found  able  to  elude  the  blow,  and 
make  it  subserve  the  very  objects  it  was  designed 


35 

to  injure.  But  if  driven  from  their  mills  and  work- 
shops, they  will  again  spread  the  wings  of  com- 
merce, and,  despite  of  your  utmost  efforts,  place 
themselves  ahead  of  all  competitors  on  the  tide  of 
prosperity. 

This  principle  of  individual  intelligence,  ingenu- 
ity, and  resolution,  pervading  the  people  of  New- 
England,  is  covering  the  land  with  its  monuments 
and  trophies.  In  every  form  in  which  skill  can 
combine  with  labor,  in  mechanism,  in  the  infinite 
applications  of  science  and  processes  of  art,  in  pa- 
tient researches  into  nature,  and  in  all  departments 
of  mental  activity  ;  in  solitary  adventure,  or  in  as- 
sociated companies,  religious,  moral,  political,  or 
financial  —  directing  the  resources  of  multitudes 
with  the  accuracy  and  efficiency  of  a  single  intelli- 
gence and  will  —  it  is  working  incalculable  effects. 
It  turns  barrenness  into  fertility,  straightens  the 
winding  and  crooked  paths,  smooths  down  every 
rugged  obstacle,  accelerates  speed,  reduces  cost, 
multiplies  business,  creates  wealth,  draws  useless 
rivers  from  their  ancient  beds  into  navigable  and 
secure  artificial  channels,  awakens  the  hum  of  in- 
ventive, animated,  and  well-rewarded  industry  along 
the  banks  of  every  descending  stream,  opens  with 
its  touch  the  bosom  of  the  earth  to  give  forth  its 
mineral  treasures,  converts  the  ice  of  our  northern 
lakes  into  a  most  welcome  article  of  world-wide 
commerce,  and  sinking  its  quarries   into  the   bare 


36 

and  desolate  mountains,  manipulates  the  shapeless 
granite  into  forms  of  architectural  grace  and  beauty, 
and  spreads  them  in  classic  colonnades  and  lofty 
structures  alona;  the  streets  of  distant  cities. 

Sons  of  New  England  !  your  ancestors  relied 
upon  the  power  of  their  own  arms,  upon  their  own 
ingenuity,  skill,  and  personal  industry  and  enter- 
prise. They  never  looked  for  the  chief  blessings 
of  life  to  the  government.  They  did  not  expect 
that  freedom,  prosperity  or  happiness  were  to  be 
secured  to  their  posterity  by  legislation,  or  any 
form  of  political  administration  ;  but  they  planted 
the  seed  which  was  to  bear  the  precious  fruits,  in 
the  awakened,  enlightened,  and  invigorated  mental 
energies  of  their  descendants.  For  this  they  pro- 
vided their  system  of  universal  education  ;  and  if 
you  would  be  worthy  of  your  ancestry,  you  must 
do  likewise.  Look  not  to  legislation,  or  to  official 
patronage,  or  to  any  public  resources  or  aids,  to 
make  yourselves  or  your  children  prosperous,  pow- 
erful and  happy.  But  trust  to  your  and  their  ener- 
gy of  character  and  enlightened  minds,  and  perse- 
vering enterprise  and  industry.  Cherish  these 
traits,  and  they  will  work  out  in  the  future  the 
same  results  as  in  the  past.  The  earth  will  every- 
where blossom  beneath  you.  You  will  be  sure  of 
exerting  your  rightful  influence  in  every  commu- 
nity. You  will  be  placed  beyond  the  reach  of  in- 
justice and   oppression.     Rash    and  weak  counsels 


37 

may  involve  the  foreign  relations  of  the  confede- 
racy ;  short-sighted  or  perverse  legislation  may  do 
its  worst  to  embarrass  yom-  interests  ;  but  if  you 
resolutely  apply  your  own  resources  of  industry, 
skill,  and  enterprise  to  circumstances  as  they  rise, 
you  will  be  able  to  turn  them  to  your  advantage, 
and  the  great  essential  of  democratic  sovereignty 
will  be  guaranteed  to  you,  the  pursuit  and  the  at- 
tainment of  individual  happiness  and  prosperity. 

Another  feature  in  the  character  of  the  Pilgrim 
Fathers,  to  which  I  wish  particularly  to  turn  your 
attention,  is  their  trust  in  an  overruling  and  co- 
operating Providence.  In  their  records,  journals, 
and  other  writings,  no  sentiment  has  greater  pro- 
minence than  this.  It  was  an  abiding  and  a  prac- 
tical principle.  It  imparted  habitual  contentment, 
gratitude,  courage,  patience,  and  assurance  of  ulti- 
mate success.  In  the  greater  part  of  their  number, 
it  was  not  a  mere  speculative  faith,  but  a  personal 
experience. 

While  the  mind,  in  the  present  state  of  being,  is 
enclosed  in  these  material  bodies,  with  no  capacity 
to  attain  to  communicable  knowledge  beyond  the 
reach  of  the  perceptions  of  sense  and  the  deduc- 
tions to  be  derived  from  them,  one  person  will 
never  be  able  to  pronounce  absolutely  upon  the 
manner  or  the  degree  to  which  the  soul  of  another 
person  is  cognizant   of  God.     We  know,  or,  by  a 


38 

proper  use  of  our  faculties  of  consciousness  and 
self-inspection,  can  know,  how  clearly  and  how 
high  our  own  souls  have  risen  into  the  presence 
and  communion  of  God.  The  observation  of  life,  if 
not  the  happy  experience  of  our  own  spirits,  gives 
evidence  that  virtue,  in  the  highest  or  indeed 
the  only  true  sense,  as  founded  upon  an  habitual 
and  spontaneous  recognition  of  duty  to  God,  brings 
the  heart  of  man  into  an  immediate  relation  to  the 
Divine  Being,  imparts  to  it  of  the  very  fulness  of 
the  Deity,  and  lifts  it  into  a  heavenly  frame.  The 
exaltation  of  character  produced  by  such  virtue  is 
as  truly  as  beautifully  described  by  the  poet,  whose 
own  genius  was  translated,  by  the  contemplation  of 
God,  into  the  divinest  nature  :  — 

"  Love  Virtue  ;  she  alone  is  free  : 
She  can  teach  you  how  to  climb 
Higher  than  the  sphery  chime  ; 
Or  if  virtue  feeble  were, 
Heaven  itself  would  stoop  to  her." 

This  elevation  of  the  habitual  promptings  of  the 
ordinary  actions  and  familiar  duties  of  daily  life 
into  the  sphere  of  piety  and  faith,  into  a  constant, 
living,  trusting  connection  with  God  —  the  form  of 
virtue  which  Milton  describes  —  must  be  allowed, 
even  by  those  who  sympathize  the  least  with  them, 
to  have  marked,  to  an  eminent  degree,  the  charac- 
ter of  the  Pilgrim  Fathers.  If  ever  men  gave  pre- 
sumptive evidence  of  habitual  communion  with  the 


39 

Most  High,  and  reference  to  him  in  action  and  in 
conversation,  they  did. 

"  In  those  days,"  said  one  of  their  number, 
looking  back,  after  the  lapse  of  nearly  half  a  cen- 
tury, to  the  time  when,  in  his  youth,  he  participated 
in  the  privations  and  perils  of  the  first  settlement 
of  the  country,  "  In  those  days  God  did  cause  his 
people  to  trust  in  Him,  and  to  be  contented  with 
mean  things."  And  after  alluding  to  the  more 
comfortable  and  secure  condition  of  the  generation 
that  had  risen  around  him,  and  mentioning  several 
particulars  in  which  their  situation  was  much  "  bet- 
ter," he  asked,  "  have  you  better  hearts  than  your 
forefathers  had  ?  "  * 

That  which  gave  the  forefathers  "  better  hearts," 
was,  as  he  stated  it,  "  Trust  in  God."  They  re- 
joiced in  the  shelter  of  an  overruling  Providence, 
and,  in  the  meanness  and  sufferings  of  their  state, 
they  looked  forward  with  glad  exultation  and  habit- 
ual exhilaration  of  soul,  and  with  as  absolute  a  vision 
as  ever  illuminated  inspired  prophet,  to  glorious 
results,  one  day  to  be  evolved,  for  the  reformation 
of  Christendom  and  the  advancement  of  mankind, 
from  the  work  whose  small  beginnings  they  had 
been  selected  to  conduct. 

I  need  not  enumerate  the  occasions  in  their  his- 
tory,  or   the  features  of  their  usages  and  institu- 

*  Captain  Roger  Clap's  Memoirs,  in  Young's  Chronicles  of  Massa- 
chusetts, p.  353. 


40 

tions,  which  strikingly  display  this  sentiment.  I 
am  not  affirming  more  than  all  acquainted  with  the 
annals  of  the  American  Colonies  will  promptly  cor- 
roborate, when  I  state  that,  without  its  influence 
pervading  their  counsels,  and  clothing  their  arms 
with  its  invincible  strength,  not  one  of  the  great 
struggles  for  liberty,  of  which  the  Revolution  was 
the  closing  act,  would  have  been  successful,  or  at- 
tempted. 

At  several  periods  the  Colonies  persevered  in  as- 
serting their  rights  and  confronting  arbitrary  power, 
when  they  were  utterly  destitute  of  all  human 
means  of  defence  or  resistance.  In  such  cases 
they  relied  upon  the  interposition  of  Providence, 
with  the  same  security  with  which  a  general,  when 
the  tide  of  battle  fluctuates,  reposes  on  his  reserved 
legions.  They  did  not  feel  authorized,  because 
they  were  temporarily  overthrown,  to  compromise 
with  the  enemies  of  their  liberty,  or  by  any  capitu- 
lation surrender  the  cause.  They  had  an  assurance 
that  Providence  was  on  their  side,  and  they  felt 
that  it  would  be  treachery  to  their  Almighty  ally 
for  them  to  strike  the  flag  of  freedom.  This  trust 
in  God  nailed  it  to  the  mast  ;  and  there  its  folds 
were  often  seen  floating  in  the  heavens,  when  the 
last  of  its  brave  defenders  had  fallen  in  the  fight. 
The  history  of  the  world  presents  no  spectacle 
more  sublime  than  the  heroic  and  devout  confi- 
dence, with  which,  when  no  longer  able  to  lift  a 


41 

hand  in  the  cause  of  liberty  and  right,  they  left  the 
issue  to  their  Divine  Protector. 

Five  years  after  the  Charter  of  the  Colony  of 
Massachusetts  Bay  had  been  brought  over  by  Win- 
throp,  when  the  entire  population  consisted  of  a 
few  infant  villages  and  scattered  hamlets,  informa- 
tion was  received  that  their  enemies  in  the  mother- 
country  had  succeeded  in  obtaining  the  appoint- 
ment of  a  Commission,  at  the  head  of  which  were 
the  two  Archbishops,  with  authority  to  regulate 
the  Plantations  of  New-England,  to  establish  the 
national  church  on  the  ruins  of  Independent  Con- 
gregationalism, to  rescind  the  Charter,  to  over- 
throw the  government,  and  to  impose  arbitrary 
laws.  The  colonists  rose  in  resistance,  few  and 
feeble  as  they  were,  with  as  much  promptitude  and 
determination  as  they  did  when  numbering  millions, 
more  than  a  century  and  a  quarter  afterwards,  on 
the  imposition  of  the  duty  upon  stamps  and  teas. 
They  erected  fortifications,  raised  a  beacon-light 
on  the  highest  eminence  in  Boston,  to  give  the 
alarm  on  the  approach  of  the  Commissioners  or 
their  agents,  and  forbidding  the  circulation  of  brass 
farthings,  ordained  that  musket  balls  should  take 
their  place  in  the  currency  and  exchanges  of  the 
people.  But  well  knowing  that  their  utmost 
strength  would  be  unavailing  against  the  power 
of  the  throne,  they  consulted  the  ministers,  as  was 
their  custom  in  cases  of  extremity,  in  reference  to 

6 


42 

their  duty  in  the  last  resort,  and  the  answer  was  — 
"  We  ought  to  defend  our  lawful  possessions,  if  we 
are  able  ;  if  not,  to  avoid  and  protract."  The 
idea  of  a  voluntary  submission  was  never  tolerated 
for  a  moment.  Again,  a  quarter  of  a  century  after- 
wards, the  Governor  of  New  York,  writing  con- 
cerning them,  said,  "  The  colony  of  Boston  re- 
mains constant  to  its  old  maxims  of  a  free  State, 
dependent  on  none  but  God."  At  length  the  long- 
deferred  blow  w^as  struck.  The  Charter,  under 
whose  benignant  shelter  the  liberties  of  Massachu- 
setts had  been  rooted,  and  had  grown  up,  and 
which  had  once  been  bravely  recovered  by  the 
people  rising  in  open  and  successful  rebellion,  was 
torn  for  ever  from  their  tenacious  grasp.  The  deed 
was  accomplished,  and  there  was  no  hope  left. 
They  were  urged  by  all  the  arguments  and  persua- 
sions that  could  be  addressed  to  their  helplessness, 
their  despair,  and  their  worldly  interests,  to  ac- 
quiesce in  the  proceedings  of  the  government,  and 
make  a  virtue  of  necessity,  to  obtain,  by  a  volun- 
tary surrender,  as  favorable  terms  as  possible. 
And  what  was  the  answer  of  the  representatives  of 
the  people  to  these  solicitations  ?  "  The  civil 
liberties  of  New-England,"  say  they,  "  are  part  of 
the  inheritance  of  our  fathers  ;  and  shall  we  give 
that  inheritance  away  ?  Is  it  objected  that  we  shall 
be  exposed  to  great  sufferings  ?  Better  suffer 
THAN  SIN.  It  is  better  to  trust  the  God  of  our 
fathers  than  to  put   confidence  in  princes.     If  we 


43 

suffer  because  we  dare  not  comply  with  the  will  of 
men  against  the  will  of  God,  we  suffer  in  a  good 
cause,  and  shall  be  accounted  martyrs  in  the  next 
generation,  and  at  the  great  day."  Upon  full  con- 
sideration, and  after  an  extended  debate,  breathing 
such  sentiments  as  these,  the  question  was  put  to 
vote,  and  the  decision  stands  recorded  in  these 
words,  "  The  deputies  consent  not." 

This  spirit,  was,  if  possible,  still  more  boldly  dis- 
played by  Connecticut,  a  few  years  afterwards, 
when  temporarily  crushed  down  by  the  same  arbi- 
trary power.  The  historian  of  the  United  States 
thus  tells  the  story  : 

"  Andros  found  the  assembly  in  session,  and  de- 
manded the  surrender  of  its  Charter.  The  brave 
Governor  Treat  pleaded  earnestly  for  the  cherished 
patent,  which  had  been  purchased  by  sacrifices  and 
martyrdoms,  and  w^as  endeared  by  halcyon  days. 
The  shades  of  evening  descended  during  the  pro- 
longed discussion  ;  an  anxious  crowd  of  farmers  had 
gathered  to  witness  the  debate.  The  Charter  lay 
on  the  table.  Of  a  sudden,  the  lights  are  extin- 
guished ;  and,  as  they  are  rekindled,  the  Charter 
had  disappeared.  William  Wadsworth,  of  Hartford, 
stealing  noiselessly  through  the  opening  crowd, 
concealed  the  precious  parchment  in  the  hollow  of 
an  oak,  which  was  older  than  the  Colony,  and  is  yet 
standing  to  confirm  the  tale."  * 

*  History  of  the  Colonization  of  the  United  States,  by  George  Ban- 
croft.    Vol.  11.,  p.  432. 


44 

This  heroic  procedure  is  recognized  at  once,  in 
its  sublimity,  when  read  in  its  true  interpretation, 
as  expressive  of  unquestioning  trust  in  the  favor  and 
interposition  of  Heaven.  The  concealment  and 
preservation  of  the  Charter,  was,  in  itself,  the  de- 
claration of  an  assurance  that,  as  a  few  short  years 
disclosed,  an  overruling  Providence  would  restore 
its  original  authority,  and  renew,  with  increase,  the 
privileges  that  flowed  from  it.  When  the  sacred 
instrument,  on  the  recurrence  of  happier  times,  was 
taken  from  its  hiding-place,  it  was,  as  the  historian 
informs  us,  ''  discolored,  but  not  effaced  ;  "  and  the 
liberties  it  secured  to  that  happy  Commonwealth 
were  never  again  overthrown,  but  having  been  con- 
secrated by  the  noblest  sacrifices  and  services  of  her 
sons,  in  the  councils  and  on  the  battle-fields  of  the 
Union,  are  now  imperishable  and  impregnable. 

As  I  have  before  observed,  this  trust  in  God  con- 
stituted, in  the  founders  of  New-England,  the 
strength  of  their  hearts  ;  and  if,  at  the  close  of  the 
first  generation,  an  aged  survivor  apprehended  that 
the  heart  of  the  people  had  lost  some  of  the  strength 
it  derived  from  this  source,  there  is  still  more  rea- 
son to  fear  it  now. 

It  is,  I  think,  the  great  error  and  fault  of  cur 
times  and  country,  that  but  little  reliance  is  placed 
on  the  overruling  and  cooperating  agency  of  God, 
and  but  little  room  allowed  for  it  in  the  calculations 
and  projects  of  men.     The  philanthropists  and  re- 


45 

formers  of  the  age,  especially,  seem  to  be  unmind- 
ful of  Providential  agency.  They,  as  well  as  the 
politicians,  speak  and  act  as  though  the  salvation 
of  mankind  depended  upon  the  adoption  of  certain 
measures  of  theirs,  and  the  cause  of  human  liberty 
and  progress  rested  mainly  on  the  success  of  their 
schemes  and  efforts.  Indeed,  there  is  a  too  general 
if  not  an  almost  universal,  tendency  to  look  to  modi- 
fications of  government,  acts  of  legislation,  and  as- 
sociated movements,  as  the  sole  means  of  promoting 
the  welfare  of  communities.  Men  allow  themselves 
to  identify  the  cause  of  liberty  and  righteousness 
with  their  own  favorite  notions  and  projects  ;  and, 
having  come  to  the  conclusion  that  they  must  have 
their  way  or  all  will  be  lost,  pursue  their  purposes 
with  a  fanatical,  overbearing,  and  unscrupulous 
spirit. 

The  oppressions  and  persecutions  with  which 
mankind  have  been  afflicted  from  the  beginning 
have  sprung,  not  from  malignity  or  cruelty,  but 
from  the  fatal  persuasion  that  the  welfare  and  re- 
demption of  the  race  are  inseparably  connected  with 
the  prevalence  of  some  particular  service,  or  creed, 
or  government.  The  same  cause  produces,  as  far 
as  circumstances  allow,  the  same  effect  now.  The 
theologian,  when  he  witnesses  the  decline  of  any  of 
his  own  favorite  dogmas,  feels  that  the  rock,  on 
which  the  Saviour  planted  his  Church,  is  crumbling 
beneath  it.     The  politician,  when  the  elections  have 


46 

terminated  in  the  overthrow  of  his  party  and  the  ac- 
cess to  power  of  his  opponents,  sinks  into  despair 
of  the  republic.  The  philanthropist,  when  the  par- 
ticular plan  he  has  long  been  urging  upon  the  pub- 
lic, as  the  only  adequate  means  of  meliorating  the 
condition  and  removing  the  wrongs  of  his  fellow- 
men,  is  discredited  and  discarded,  is  too  apt  to  aban- 
don his  hopes  of  humanity,  and  lose  his  faith  as  well 
as  his  temper.  The  element  in  which  they  are  all 
deficient,  is  an  abiding,  intelligent,  steadfast  assur- 
ance, that  God,  as  well  as  they,  is  at  work,  reform- 
ing and  blessing  the  world.  Instead  of  assuming, 
as  they  attempt  to  do,  the  entire  command  of  events, 
if  they  would  but  pause,  from  time  to  time,  and  trace 
the  steps  of  the  All-wise  and  Omnipotent  Disposer, 
and  await  with  serene  and  cheerful  confidence  the 
movements  of  the  Divine  Agency,  a  path  of  most 
efficient  and  benignant  action  would  be  opened  to 
them,  and  their  efforts  be  crowned  with  sure  and 
permanent  success. 

The  Providence  of  God  over  the  moral  world,  on 
which  our  fathers  rested  their  chief  hope,  and  the 
belief  of  which  was  to  them  an  inexhaustible  foun- 
tain of  strength,  courage  and  patience,  is  more  sig- 
nally displayed  to  us  than  it  was  to  them.  The 
intermediate  experience  of  the  nations,  and  the  in- 
creased illuminations  of  science,  have  disclosed  the 
laws  which  control  the  welfare  of  associated  men, 
as  well  as   of  individuals,  with  a  clearness  and  cer- 


47 

tainty  not  vouchsafed  to  former  ages.  In  those  con- 
stant and  steadfast  laws,  rather  than  in  any  extra- 
ordinary phenomena,  we  recognize  the  Providence 
of  God.  In  them  we  behold  His  hand  working  the 
issues  of  his  love. 

Such  is  our  speculative  faith.  Allow  me  to  pre- 
sent an  illustration  of  the  manner  in  which  it  ought 
to  be  practically  applied. 

Labor,  in  its  multiplex  and  infinite  forms,  ope- 
rating with  the  instruments  and  on  the  condition  of 
matter  or  of  mind,  is  the  great  creative  principle  of 
private  and  public  wealth,  prosperity  and  refine- 
ment. When  it  acts  under  the  guidance  of  skill  and 
intelligence  —  when  it  obeys  the  promptings  of  a 
free  spirit  —  when  the  arm  of  the  laborer  is  invig- 
orated by  a  personal  interest  in  the  results  of  his 
labor,  it  may  with  truth  be  said  that  it  conquers  all 
things.  It  is  clothed  with  strength  which  never 
wearies,  and  to  which  nothing  is  impossible.  Na- 
ture and  life  become  its  willing  and  rejoicing  tribu- 
taries. The  earth  blossoms  in  its  brightest  beauty, 
and  teems  with  its  most  abundant  bounties  wherever 
labor  is  intelligent  and  free. 

But  where  the  laborer  is  not  a  freeman,  nor  en- 
lightened by  education,  nor  personally  interested  in 
the  products  of  his  toil,  a  blight  and  a  barrenness, 
poverty  and  want,  are  sure  to  spread  over  the  land, 
no  matter  how  great  its  physical  resources,  either 
in  the  muscular  strength  and  endurance  of  its  peo- 
ple, or  in  the  original  fertility  of  its  soil. 


48 

This  indissoluble  connection  of  the  highest  profit- 
ableness with  the  freedom  and  intelligence  of  labor, 
is  a  law  of  God's  moral  government ;  or  it  is,  to 
speak  more  accurately,  one  of  the  ordinary  and 
established  methods  in  which  the  Divine  Provi- 
dence visibly  controls  the  progress  and  condition  of 
humanity. 

The  entire  surface  and  whole  history  of  the 
world  display  the  perpetual  and  irresistible  opera- 
tion of  this  law.  It  solves  all  the  problems  which 
the  fortunes  and  fates  of  nations  present.  Take  the 
case,  for  instance,  of  Ireland.  A  spot  more  lovely 
or  more  favored  by  nature  is  not  to  be  found  on  the 
face  of  the  globe  ;  —  its  climate  healthful  and  in- 
spiring —  its  scenery  most  beautiful  and  variegated 
—  its  soil  fertile  in  every  variety  of  essential  pro- 
duce—  its  inhabitants  brave,  hardy,  industrious, 
and  capable  of  continued  toil  to  a  degree  never  sur- 
passed, and  partaking,  as  national  and  almost  uni- 
versal characteristics,  of  the  very  soul  of  humor,  of 
inexhaustible  cheerfulness,  of  the  warmest  affec- 
tions, and  of  the  brightest  intellect.  But  almost 
from  its  first  appearance  on  the  field  of  history,  it 
has  arrested  the  anxious  and  compassionate  atten- 
tion of  benevolent  hearts  to  the  convulsions  and 
sufferings  of  its  population.  At  this  very  moment, 
the  piteous  and  dying  outcries  of  famine,  mingled 
with  the  appalling  shouts  and  execrations  of  mobs 
of  desperate  men,  come  to  us  with  every  communi- 


49 

cation  from  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic.  I  need 
not  recount  the  efforts  and  struggles  which  have,  to 
this  hour,  been  made  to  redeem  that  island  from 
wretchedness.  Eloquence  has  lavished  its  richest 
and  sublimest  resources  of  tender  persuasion  and 
animating  encouragement  and  terrific  denunciation. 
Patriotism,  in  all  its  forms,  has  offered  itself  up. 
The  wisdom  of  legislators  and  ministers  of  state 
has  been  exercised  in  vain.  Popular  excitement  in 
vast  assemblages,  wide-spread  associations,  and  uni- 
versal agitation,  have  been  brought  to  bear.  But 
the  evil  has  not  been  overcome,  or  even  reduced. 
The  remedy  is  to  be  found  in  the  reverent  applica- 
tion of  that  law  of  Providence  to  which  I  am  now 
adverting.  As,  when  the  chemist  brings  two  sub- 
stances into  contact,  the  mysterious  energies  of 
occult  nature  instantly  evolve  striking  results  —  so 
let  those,  in  whose  hands  are  the  destinies  of  Ire- 
land, recognizing  the  Divine  Law,  by  which  pros- 
perity is  made  to  spring  from  enlightened,  free,  and 
interested  industry,  supply  the  conditions,  leaving 
God  to  w^ork  out  the  result.  Establish  the  district 
school,  and  allow  the  laborer  to  acquire  a  personal 
and  permanent  interest  in  the  soil  he  tills.  Do 
this,  and  you  do  all  that  man  need  or  can  do.  God 
will  do  the  rest.  He  will  spread  peace  and  plenty 
over  its  surface,  and  the  Green  Isle  of  the  Ocean 
will  bloom  in  beauty,  and  reflect  back  from  its  land- 


50 

scape  as  bright  a  radiance  as  has  ever  glowed  from 
the  genius  of  its  orators  and  poets. 

The  subject  of  labor,  particularly  as  exhibited 
in  the  servile  population  of  a  portion  of  our  own 
country,  is  attracting  absorbing  attention  at  the 
present  time.  I  am  aware  of  the  prejudices  that 
are  prone  to  arise  against  any  one  who  ventures  to 
discuss  it  in  an  address  to  a  mixed  assembly  ;  but 
as  I  am  confident  that  the  public  good  requires  that 
it  should  be  presented  to  the  consideration  of  the 
people  generally  in  the  light  reflected  upon  it  by 
the  law  of  Providence  now  under  our  contemplation, 
I  feel  constrained  not  to  shrink  from  the  opportu- 
nity and  the  duty  of  subjecting  it  to  that  light. 

For  many  years  we  have  seen  a  portion  of  our 
immediate  fellow-citizens  arraying  themselves  into 
associations,  and  resorting  to  the  machinery  and 
expedients  of  political  parties,  for  the  purpose  of 
bringing  the  legislative  action  of  the  country  to  bear 
against  this  species  of  labor,  and  compel  its  aboli- 
tion by  legal  enactments  and  alterations  in  the  let- 
ter of  the  constitution.  On  the  other  hand,  we  see 
those  who  imagine  themselves  interested  in  its 
continuance,  losing  the  propriety  of  their  judgment 
under  the  irritation  into  which  they  have  permitted 
themselves  to  be  kindled,  banding  together  for  its 
preservation,  wielding,  with  a  temper  such  as  af- 
frighted despotism  elsewhere  manifests  towards 
those  who  threaten  its  overthrow,  the  weapons  of 


51 

legal  and  illegal  violence  against  all  who  question 
its  utility  or  righteousness,  rendering  the  very  dis- 
cussion of  it  penal  and  perilous  to  the  life,  strug- 
gling to  spread  it  over  new  members  of  the  Con- 
federacy, and  actually  plunging  the  Union  into 
bloody  and  destructive  war,  to  conquer  from  a 
neighbouring  nation  boundless  regions  of  territory 
for  the  purpose  of  extending  this  form  of  labor. 
Keeping  my  eye  fixed  upon  the  operations  of  Provi- 
dence, I  partake  not  in  the  apprehensions  of  one 
of  these  descriptions  of  persons,  and  look  upon  the 
efforts  of  the  other  with  an  assured  conviction  of 
their  impotence.  On  the  one  side  I  see  men  striv- 
ing Avith  their  puny  arms  and  frail  passions  to 
accomplish  that  which  God,  in  his  omnipotence,  is 
accomplishing  by  processes  which  neither  need,  nor 
are  aided  by,  their  noisy  outcries  and  convulsive 
agitations  ;  and  on  the  other  side  I  behold  politi- 
cians and  rulers  contending  against  the  laws  of  the 
Most  High,  and  striving,  with  efforts  as  vain  and 
absurd  as  would  be  human  combinations  to  delay 
the  progress  of  the  seasons,  to  extend  and  perpet- 
uate over  this  fair  and  glorious  continent  an  insti- 
tution into  whose  very  vitals  He  has  inserted  the 
ineradicable  elements  of  decay  and  dissolution. 

If  any  one  demands  evidence  to  justify  this  view 
of  the  subject,  let  him  float  down  rivers  that  divide 
regions  where,  on  the  one  hand,  labor  is  free,  and, 
on  the  other,  paralyzed  by  bondage  ;  on  one  shore 


52 

achieving  its  triumphs,  under  the  stimuhis  of  per- 
sonal interest,  with  the  strength  that  resides  in  a 
freeman's  arm,  and  with  the  lights  of  skill  and  in- 
telligence ;  and  on  the  other,  dragging  its  own 
weight  after  it,  moving  with  reluctant  steps,  and 
requiring  constant  superintendence,  guidance,  and 
compulsion.  On  one  bank,  multiplying  millions 
are  rearing,  at  frequent  intervals,  queen-like  cities, 
and  by  spontaneous  and  gladsome  toils  and  enlight- 
ened ingenuity  and  perseverance,  imparting  to  the 
yielding  and  grateful  soil  renewed  supplies  of  rich- 
ness and  fertility.  On  the  other,  waste,  and  neg- 
lect, and  exhaustion,  are  spreading  their  mildew 
influence.  Such  a  river,  with  the  contrasted  scenes 
on  its  opposite  landscapes,  becomes  vocal  with  the 
declaration  that  the  very  earth  itself  loves  and 
blesses  freedom,  and  crowns  with  honor  and  pros- 
perity the  intelligent  labor  which  owns  it. 

An  inspection  of  the  map  of  the  United  States 
displays  the  unrivalled  natural  advantages  of  Vir- 
ginia. The  ocean  embraces  it  in  wide  bays  and 
noble  rivers.  The  air  of  heaven  flows  over  it  in 
most  balmy  and  salubrious  breezes.  Alluvial  mea- 
dows, swelling  uplands,  green  and  lovely  intervals, 
romantic  and  towering  mountains,  diversify  its  sur- 
face, which  extends  beyond  the  summit  ridge  of  the 
Atlantic  States,  and  admits  it  to  a  participation  of 
the  benefits  of  the  valley  of  the  great  West,  whose 
rivers  fertilize  its  interior  boundary.     In   extent  of 


53 

territory,  in  natural  productiveness,  in  the  intel- 
lectual energies  of  its  freeholders,  and  in  its  ances- 
tral treasures  of  wisdom  and  patriotism,  the  Old 
Dominion  has  no  superior  in  this  Confederacy. 
Under  the  census  of  1820,  the  ratio  of  representa- 
tion in  Congress  was  fixed  at  40,000,  population 
being  computed  according  to  the  provisions  of  the 
Constitution,  and  Virginia  was  entitled  to  twenty- 
two  members.  By  the  same  apportionment,  the 
State  of  New  York  was  entitled  to  thirty-four 
members.  Under  the  census  of  1840,  the  ratio  of 
representation  was  fixed  at  70,680.  New  York 
retains  the  same  number  as  under  the  census  of 
1820,  namely,  thirty-four,  while  Virginia  has  gone 
down  to  fifteen  !  a  loss  of  nearly  one-third  of  her 
political  power  in  twenty  years  !  How  long  will  it 
be  before  her  patriotic  and  enlightened  statesmen 
will  return  to  their  senses  on  this  subject,  and  fol- 
lowing the  counsels  of  Jefferson,  bravely  meet  the 
question  on  its  merits,  and  revive  the  wasting  ener- 
gies of  their  people  and  their  soil  ? 

It  is  now  twenty-five  years  since  the  American 
Confederacy  was  convulsed  to  its  centre,  and  the 
government  threatened  with  dissolution,  on  the  ad- 
mission of  the  territory  of  Missouri  to  the  Union. 
The  party  in  Congress,  resolved  upon  allowing  the 
institution  of  slavery  to  exist  in  that  State,  finally 
prevailed.  Looking  at  the  progress  and  condition 
of  Ohio,  and  the  other  States  which  have  grown  up 


54 

under  the  celebrated  Ordinance  of  1787,  and  con- 
sidering the  natural  resources  and  advantages  of 
Missouri,  it  can  scarcely  be  doubted  that  if  it  had 
been  consecrated  to  free  labor,  it  would,  before 
this,  have  overflowed  in  prosperity,  and  other 
States  have  been  seen  advancing  into  the  circle  of 
the  Union  beyond  its  remotest  borders.  Now 
what  are  the  facts  ?  In  his  recent  annual  message, 
the  Governor  of  that  State,  in  all  the  deliberate- 
ness  and  solemnity  of  an  official  announcement,  de- 
clares, "  With  our  rich  soil  and  genial  climate,  we 
are  not  a  prosperous  and  thriving  people  ;  "  and 
plainl}^,  with  faithful  boldness,  accounts  for  the 
failure.  "  We  depend,"  says  he,  "  on  physical 
labor,  and  reject  the  superior  advantages  of  mental 
labor.  We  depend  on  brute  force,  and  reject  the 
superior  advantages  of  skill  and  science." 

With  such  demonstrations,  and  they  might  easily 
be  indefinitely  multiplied,  will  it  be  possible  for 
our  countrymen,  in  any  section  of  the  Union,  much 
longer  to  keep  themselves  blind  to  the  law  of  Pro- 
vidence, thus  announcing  itself,  like  the  handwriting 
of  God  on  the  walls  of  Belshazzar's  palace,  in  let- 
ters of  light  and  of  fire  ? 

But,  however  it  may  be  with  others,  may  the 
sons  of  New-England  ever  behold  and  confide  in  it. 
Your  fathers  felt  an  assurance,  founded,  in  them, 
upon  faith  alone,  that  God  was  with  them,  and  that 
he  would,  at  last,  give  a  glorious  fulfilment  to  the 


55 

hopes  they  had  cherished,  of  freedom,  happiness, 
and  righteousness,  for  their  descendants,  for  their 
country,  and  for  mankind.  What  they  beheld  in 
faith,  we  behold  in  vision.  We  see  prosperity, 
wealth,  progress,  and  happiness,  such  as  the  world 
never  witnessed,  and  philosophers  have  scarce 
dreamed  of  before,  following  in  the  steps  of  free- 
dom, intelligence  and  industry.  Let  us  recognize 
the  law  of  Providence,  and  the  hand  of  God  ;  and 
let  us  never  allow"  a  doubt  or  a  fear  to  come  over 
our  hearts  in  reference  to  the  cause  of  liberty  and 
humanity. 

I  would  earnestly  press  these  considerations 
upon  those  of  our  fellow-citizens  who  are  endea- 
vouring to  impart  to  the  whole  body  of  the  people 
the  panic  to  which  they  have  yielded  up  their  own 
minds,  on  the  subject  of  slavery.  They  tell  us  that 
its  roots  are  sinking  deeper,  and  its  baleful  shadow 
falling  broader  over  the  continent.  They  point  to 
the  new  States  that  have  brought  their  contributions 
to  sustain  it  to  the  houses  of  Congress  and  the  elec- 
toral colleges  of  the  Union.  They  are  filled  with 
terror  at  the  acquisition,  by  invasion  and  conquest, 
of  boundless  territories,  to  be  occupied  by  the  insti- 
tution, and  to  give  an  interminable  preponderance 
to  the  political  power  of  which  it  is  the  basis  and 
the  bond. 

I  would  urge  and  implore  all  such  persons,  to 
turn    from    the    contemplation    of    the    miserable 


56 

machinations  of  sectional  politicians,  who  in  their 
folly  and  blindness  are  endeavouring  to  employ  the 
power  of  our  government  to  accomplish  this  pur- 
pose, and  to  lift  their  eyes  to  that  august  Provi- 
dence, which  is  steadily  and  surely  baffling  their 
plans,  and  by  its  immutable  laws  securing  to  free 
and  enlightened  labor  the  dominion  of  the  earth. 
Instead  of  being  terrified  and  irritated  at  what  men, 
and  parties,  and  earthly  rulers  are  vainly  attempt- 
ing, and  spreading  the  unbelieving  and  malign  in- 
fection among  our  fellow-citizens,  let  us,  when  the 
Almighty  is  so  visibly  stretching  forth  his  own  arm, 
"  leave  Him,"  as  one  of  the  greatest  of  the  Puritans 
said  *'  alone  to  govern  the  world  ;  "  not  interpos- 
ing our  agency  unless  in  methods  subsidiary  to 
His.  Let  us  stand  back,  as  it  were,  in  reverent 
silence,  and  rejoicing  assurance,  and  witness  the 
movements  of  our  God,  as  he  goes  forth  in  those 
sublime  elemental  laws  of  his  moral  government  by 
whose  resistless  energy  he  is  removing  the  obstruc- 
tions in  the  social  and  political  world,  which  have 
heretofore  checked  the  prevalence  of  liberty,  jus- 
tice, and  happiness  among  men.  The  history  of 
nations,  and  especially  the  history  and  present  con- 
dition of  our  own  country,  display  the  operation  of 
those  law'S  ;  and  confiding  in  their  continued  opera- 
tion, let  us  look  forward,  with  certainty,  to  their 
triumphs  in  the  future. 

And  while  we  thus  trust  to  the  Providence  of  God 


57 

to  remove  this  great  evil,  let  us  do  our  part,  in  co- 
operation and  subserviency  to  Him,  in  rendering 
more  efficient  the  agency  he  employs.  Let  us  give 
our  influence  and  efforts  to  promote  the  circulation 
of  knowledge,  to  encourage  freedom  of  thought, 
enterprise  and  industry,  and  to  impart  to  our  fel- 
low-men, and  confirm  in  our  own  hearts,  the  truths 
of  religion,  and  the  sentiments  of  piety,  which 
clothe  the  spirit  with  a  strength  from  God.  When 
the  feet  of  the  Pilgrims  first  struck  the  Rock  of 
Plymouth,  these  elements  of  character  —  sources  of 
the  world's  regeneration — gushed  forth  from  it. 
They  were  the  living  waters  that  sustained  our 
fathers  in  the  wilderness,  and  they  will  at  length 
fertilize  and  gladden  the  whole  continent. 

Freedom  and  enterprise  are  swelling,  with  a  ra- 
pidity w^hich  no  calculation  can  follow,  the  millions 
which  overflow  the  boundaries  of  the  north-western 
States.  They  will  bring  into  the  bosom  of  the  re- 
public more  new  States  on  the  slopes  of  the  Stony 
Mountains,  than  could  be  carved  out  of  the  whole 
of  Mexico.  They  will  forthwith,  strangely  con- 
founding the  hopes  of  some,  preoccupy  the  grand 
and  beautiful  regions  already  conquered  by  our  gal- 
lant armies.  The  climate,  soil,  and  all  the  features 
of  that  country  will  be  found  incompatible  with  any 
other  than  free  labor.  Gradually  our  own  territo- 
ries, and  the  States  even  where,  as  the  Governor 
of  Missouri  expresses  himself,  "  physical    labor  " 

8 


53 

has  been  longest  depended  upon,  will  throw  off  the 
incubus,  and  welcome  the  blessings  scattered  by 
liberty  along  her  path. 

My  limits  allow  me  no  more  extended  and  elabo- 
rate discussion.  There  is  one  topic,  however, 
which  I  must  touch  before  I  close. 

Our  fathers,  as  has  been  before  intimated,  enter- 
tained the  idea,  —  sometimes  the  vision  brightened 
into  clearness  of  delineation,  sometimes  it  was 
dimmed  with  shadows,  but  its  outlines  never  van- 
ished wholly  from  their  minds,  — that  a  vast  em- 
pire, to  be  limited  only  by  the  great  oceans,  was  to 
rise  from  the  foundations  they  laid.  In  a  prophetic 
dream,  which  a  poet  of  our  owm  day  imagines  to 
have  visited  one  of  the  Pilgrim  Fathers,  he  justly 
represents  the  voice  of  their  posterity  as  exclaiming 
—  "  The  continent  is  ours."  *  Besides  particular 
sentiments  incidentally  expressed,  to  be  found  in 
their  writings  to  this  effect,  the  thought  lay  deep 
beneath  their  institutions  and  whole  public  policy. 
It  was  expressed  in  their  charters.  It  supplied  a 
perpetual  stimulus  to  their  resolution,  and  made 
that  resolution  absolutely  unconquerable,  to  expel 
the  French  from  the  western  wilderness  behind 
them,  and  is  seen  to  have  exalted  the  patriotic  en- 
thusiasm of  such  men    as  John  Adams  and  Josiah 

*  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes. 


59 

Quincy,  Jr.,  in  the  opening  struggles  of  the  Revolu- 
tionary controversy,  suggesting  to  their  ardent 
minds  the  most  lofty  views  of  the  future  fortunes  of 
the  country,  which  they  had  resolved  to  bear  on 
their  arms,  at  every  peril,  into  the  family  of  inde- 
pendent nations. 

The  Constitution- of  the  United  States  of  Ame- 
rica, that  greatest  production  of  associated  human 
wisdom,  the  most  beneficent  plan  ever  contrived 
for  the  government  of  men  in  bodies  politic,  affords, 
if  we  will  but  be  true  to  it,  the  means  by  which 
gradually,  —  and  far  better  would  it  be  if  it  were 
left  peaceably  to  be  done,  —  the  whole  continent 
may  be  included  within  the  protection  and  shelter 
of  one  empire  of  liberty  and  order.  The  organiza- 
tion of  State  governments,  within  certain  conven- 
ient limits,  for  all  local  purposes  of  legislation  and 
administration,  and  the  Union  of  them  into  one 
pervading  government  for  purposes  in  which  there 
is  a  general  interest,  is  a  plan  which,  I  most  as- 
suredly believe,  will  be  found  to  work  more  favora- 
bly the  wider  the  regions  over  which  it  is  extended. 
As  the  system  expands,  territorial  distance,  and  the 
want  of  prompt  inter-communication  between  re- 
mote members  of  the  Confederacy,  the  only  real 
difficulties  that  threatened  to  be  insurmountable, 
are  already  greatly  reduced,  and  almost  absolutely 
obliterated  by  recent  achievements  in  science. 

The  American  States  have  now  continued  in  sub- 


60 

stantial  union  for  seventy  years.  They  went  into 
the  Revolutionary  War,  when  occupying  a  narrow 
strip  of  the  continent  along  the  Atlantic  shore  ; 
they  now  stretch  their  legislative  and  executive  or- 
ganization to  the  Pacific.  When  their  numbers 
were  few,  and  the  limits  of  the  country  itself  were 
contracted,  a  disaffected  section  might  entertain 
the  project  of  withdrawing  from  the  Union  ;  but 
now  its  insignificance,  if  separated,  is  so  palpable 
as  to  forbid  the  idea.  For  half  a  century,  the 
question  was  discussed  in  newspapers,  in  periodi- 
cals, at  college  exhibitions,  and  in  all  private  cir- 
cles, whether  extension  of  territory  would  not 
weaken  the  bonds  of  Union.  It  is  high  time  to 
drop  it  forever.  There  is  not  a  State,  a  county,  a 
city,  a  town,  a  village,  in  the  nation,  in  which,  if 
the  popular  sentiment  were  tested,  allegiance  to 
the  Union  would  not  be  found  prevalent  and  ine- 
radicable. 

The  only  source,  from  which  alienation  to  the 
Union  is  to  be  apprehended,  is  on  the  part  of  those 
persons  who  feel  themselves  implicated  in  objec- 
tionable institutions  maintained  and  cherished  in 
some  of  the  States.  A  certain  description  of  igno- 
rant and  insolent  foreigners,  not  understanding  our 
beautiful  Federal  system,  are  doing  what  they  can 
to  inflame  this  feeling.  On  this  point  I  wish,  be- 
fore I  close,  to  draw  a  lesson  of  warning  from  an 
error  of  our  fathers.     They  were  deluded  by  this 


61 

same  idea.  A  Confederation  was  a  favorite  object 
with  them  from  the  beginning.  It  was  suggested 
naturally  in  the  train  of  associations  attached  to 
their  vision  of  a  boundless  empire  of  freedom  and 
virtue.  But  they  were  prevented  from  developing 
it  with  efficacy  by  the  apprehension  that  its  mem- 
bers would  be  implicated  in  the  peculiarities  of 
each  other.  For  this  reason  Rhode  Island  was  ex- 
cluded ;  and  until  the  period  of  the  Revolution  the 
plan  of  a  Confederation  was  never  made  agreeable 
to  all  the  Colonies.  If  it  had  been  otherwise  —  if, 
leaving  to  each  the  care  of  its  local  concerns,  from 
the  beginning,  the  several  Colonies  had  sustained  a 
confederated  council,  for  the  consideration  and  pro- 
motion of  the  general  good,  no  human  intelligence 
can  calculate  the  effects  upon  the  course  of  events. 
Perhaps,  essential  independence  would  have  been 
secured  without  bloodshed,  or  any  of  the  disastrous 
economical  and  moral  effects  of  a  long  war. 

But,  however  that  might  have  been,  we  are  liv- 
ing in  the  enjoyment  of  the  benefits  of  a  Confede- 
racy that  preserves  us  from  intestine  war,  and  con- 
fers upon  us  untold  blessings.  Instead  of  wishing 
to  go  out  from  it  because  it  includes  conditions  and 
institutions  which  we  do  not  fancy,  let  us  rejoice 
that  it  opens  wide  its  arms  to  gather  into  its  peace- 
ful fold,  and  under  its  remedial  influences,  all  who 
seek  admission.  Instead  of  feeling  scandalized  be- 
cause some  States,  in  the  exercise  of  their  reserved 
sovereignty,  enact  barbarous  laws,  and  cherish  un- 


62 

righteous  institutions,  if  we  appreciated  all  the  salu- 
tary effects  flowing  from  the  Union,  and  kept  clearly 
in  our  minds  the  principle  on  which  it  was  founded, 
w^e  should  only  regret  that  we  cannot,  at  once,  ex- 
tend it  over  all,  even  the  most  ill-governed  and  be- 
nighted races  of  the  earth.  Without  entering  upon 
an  enumeration  of  the  beneficial  influences  of  such 
a  Confederation  upon  all  whom  it  includes,  it  an- 
swers my  present  purpose  to  observe  that,  in  re- 
moving standing  armies,  fortified  and  garrisoned 
towns,  the  iniquities  that  mark  the  borders  of  con- 
tiguous and  unfriendly  nations,  and  all  the  curses 
that  follow  in  the  train  of  rival  and  warring  States, 
we  have  multiplied  incalculably  the  chances,  and 
cleared  away  the  chief  obstructions  to  the  progress 
of  reform.  Indeed  the  abolition  of  standing  armies 
is  the  first  step  in  the  elevation  of  a  people,  and  it 
must  be  taken  before  any  real  progress  can  be 
made.  The  permanent  military  organization  of  a 
large  proportion  of  the  population,  separated  from 
the  ordinary  avocations  of  life,  is  the  last  resort, 
and  the  strong  defence,  of  modern  despotism.  It 
is  the  contrivance,  by  which  kings  turn  the  physical 
power  of  the  people  against  the  people  themselves. 
The  relief  from  a  standing  army,  which  we  are 
enjoying  in  this  country,  is  itself  a  blessing  greater 
than  was  ever  vouchsafed  to  a  people  before.  To 
appreciate  it  fully  one  must  travel  in  other  coun- 
tries. The  military  forces  thought  necessary  to 
protect  the  frontiers  of  the  Union,  and  preserve 


63 

during  peace  the  basis  upon  which,  in  the  event 
of  a  foreign  war,  the  strength  of  the  nation  might  be 
organized  for  belligerent  purposes,  are  at  this  mo- 
ment nearly  all  withdrawn  from  the  country  ;  but 
the  frame  of  society  throughout  this  great  empire  is 
found  able  to  stand  without  their  aid.  In  all  the 
Northern  States,  and,  indeed,  over  nearly  the  entire 
surface  of  the  Republic,  there  are  not  at  the  present 
time  more  troops,  of  the  regular  army,  all  told, 
than  are  permanently  stationed  in  every  third-rate 
city  of  Europe.  If  there  are  persons  among  us,  so 
outraged  by  the  existence  of  an  institution  that  holds 
in  bondage  a  portion  of  the  colored  race  in  some 
quarters  of  the  Confederacy,  as  to  countenance  the 
idea  of  a  separation  of  the  States,  let  them  consider 
that  while  such  a  result  would  not  in  all  probability 
reduce  the  evil,  upon  which  their  thoughts  have  be- 
come so  painfully  concentrated,  it  would  inevitably 
and  instantly  lead  to  the  additional  enslavement  of 
thousands  and  tens  of  thousands  of  the  white  popu- 
lation, in  the  form  of  permanent  standing  armies, 
bristling  along  the  borders  of  the  multiplying  frag- 
ments of  the  Union,  and  preying  upon  the  resources, 
the  morals  and  the  liberties  of  all  the  rest. 

My  last  exhortation  to  the  sons  of  New-England, 
then,  is  to  be  faithful  for  ever  to  the  Federal 
Union.  While  they  exercise,  according  to  their 
several  convictions,  their  political  rights  in  opposing 
all  partial  and  sectional  legislation,  resisting  the 
extension,  by  the  national  authority,  of  anti-repub- 


64 

lican    institutions,    and   discountenancing   unright- 
eousness and  injustice  in  the  mode  in  which  the  gov- 
ernment is  administered,  let  them  rejoice  in  the 
assurance  that,  over  whatever  extent  of  territory 
and  from  whatever  motives  of  policy  the  Confed- 
eracy is  spread,  within  its  boundaries  the  arts  of 
Peace,  which  are  their   arts,  and  were  the  arts  of 
their  fathers,  will  have  an  opportunity,  such  as  has 
never  been  secured  before,  to  prevail  over  all  other 
arts.     If,  impelled  by  the  enterprise  which  marks 
their  race,  they  follow  with  their  traffic  and   ingen- 
ious industry  the  conquests  of  our  armies,  or  open 
the  way  for  cultivation  and  civilization  to  advance 
into  the  remotest  regions  of  the  West,  or  pursue 
their  avocations  in  any  quarter  of  the  Union,  how- 
ever inconsistent  with  their  views  its  peculiar  insti- 
tutions may  be,  if  they  carry  their  household  gods 
with  them,  all  others  will  gradually  be  converted  to 
their  principles,  and  imbued  with  their  spirit.     If 
the  sons  of  New-England  rear  the  school-house  and 
the  church  wherever  they  select    their  homes,  if 
they  preserve  the  reliance  upon  their  own  individual 
energies,  the  love  of  knowledge,  the  trust  in  Provi- 
dence, the  spirit  of  patriotic  faith  and  hope,  which 
made  its  most  barren  regions  blossom  and  become 
fruitful  around  their  fathers,  then  will  the  glorious 
vision  of  those  fathers  be  realized,  and  the  Conti- 
nent rejoice,  in  all  its  latitudes  and  from  sea  to  sea, 
in  the  blessings  of  freedom  and  education,  of  peace 
and  prosperity,  of  virtue  and  religion. 


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